Secrets
by OughtaKnowBetter
Summary: The team goes on a mission in the Aegean. Story complete.
1. Chapter 1

Secrets

By OughtaKnowBetter

_Crap_.

Charlie Grey, sergeant in the United States Army, could think of another few dozen other expletives that would fit the situation—many of which were in different languages—but none of them seemed to have the short and sweet explosion of sound which so perfectly described what he felt at the moment.

It was the pair sitting six rows down, on the other side of the aisle of this little train meandering its way across the Turkish countryside. Sure, looking at fellow passengers occasionally was an expected way to pass the time. Twelve to fourteen hours sitting in one spot made for a hell of a long time to play 'I Spy With My Little Eye'. It was only human nature to size up the rest of the passengers and then pull a hat down over the eyes to try for some sleep. The overhead lights were low; either conserving energy or the electrical wasn't working properly. Charlie hadn't bothered to figure out which was the cause.

No, this pair had aroused his interest from the moment they'd climbed into the rickety car, shoving a pair of suitcases onto the overhead rack and plopping onto an empty two-seater. Not one stitch of clothing looked out of place or screaming for attention. The clothes were dark brown, no identifying marks, no rips or tears—but that alone attracted comment. Everyone else on this misbegotten trip wore loose and baggy outfits selected for maximum comfort and durability, a few in traditional garb and the majority more Westernized, but every other stitch showed signs of wear by Western standards. These were people who wore their clothes over and over until the fabric wore out. Charlie himself had made sure that his own clothing looked similar: a rip here and there, a hole wore through the knee through sheer overuse. Even the black embroidery on the shoulder of his brown vest had faded so that it couldn't be seen in the dim overhead light. A little bleach back in his hotel room had taken care of that detail.

Not this pair. Each one had had better food, better training, and better muscles than the average citizen, and Charlie was willing to bet good Euros that each one carried a weapon in a shoulder holster underneath the nearly new brown coats.

_Crap_. That meant _two_ reasons to resent the pair. Reason number one: they were watching him, possibly expecting to grab him at some inopportune time. Reason number two: those coats looked warm. The windows of the train kept the worst of the wind away from him and the rest of the passengers, but the train had long ago given up any pretentions of creature comforts. Charlie was _cold_.

It still could have been innocent. The pair could be after someone else, some other poor slob of an intelligence agent of a foreign government. This train could have been the most efficient means of transportation from Rize to Istanbul, the route following along the Black Sea. They could be minor government officials, traveling from one province to another, enjoying the freedom of allowing someone else to take care of the travel arrangements.

That was what Charlie told himself to believe, until he had had a better chance to observe the pair in return. Grey had done exactly what almost everyone else on this trip had done: had shoved his travel pack into the overhead compartment. Had dropped his backside onto the nearest seat; in Charlie's case, an aisle spot next to a student heading back to school. The kid had a textbook in his hands, written in English, a heavy tome even less comprehensible than usual with chemical equations scattered across the pages. Grey himself spoke four other languages besides English and had a smattering of three others under his belt and still found chemical-ese to be the most difficult to understand. The kid's lips moved as he traced his finger along the words, speeding up more quickly with the chemical symbols. Those symbols were clearly the easiest for the student to comprehend.

The kid's clothing, like the rest, had a few rips in them and the kid nestled himself into his heavy tan sheepskin jacket to keep himself as comfortable as possible while studying. Grey's own hat was almost a mirror image of the kid's, though older-appearing and more worn with additional tears in the fabric; one of the reasons that Grey had chosen this particular seat. A casual fellow passenger might even have taken the pair for brothers, traveling together. Grey had other things in mind: he had made certain that one of those rips in his hat was properly positioned so that when he pulled the cap down over his eyes, ostensibly to snooze away as much of the trip as possible, he could peer through the hole and observe his fellow passengers.

One of the suspect pair had done as expected: he was sleeping, although Charlie had no doubt that the man could spring into action on a moment's notice. The other? That was the one that gave it away. Once satisfied that Grey was 'sleeping' under his hat, the second eyed him curiously. Since Grey knew that his whole appearance had been designed to be unworthy of curiosity, Charlie's own radar was aroused.

_Crap_. Grey couldn't afford to be taken, not with what he was carrying. A cursory search of his person wouldn't reveal what he was hiding, but anything more than a mild Customs' inspection would cause the U.S. Army to be out one sergeant that Charlie happened to be very fond of. In fact, Charlie had been planning to avoid Customs altogether, just in case he happened to come across some eager young inspector who had decided to prove his own worth by harassing someone with a fake Spanish passport.

Grey stifled the sigh of frustration. This was turning this mission into something that should have been mildly tension-producing along with a healthy dose of sun-bathing on the beaches of the Riviera into something that had a very strong possibility of heading straight down the crapper.

He considered his options, wishing that he had a few more. One: stay on the train until it crossed the Bosporus and arrived on the western side of Istanbul, hoping that the pair had been assigned to merely monitor his movements until he left the country. It wasn't an unreasonable supposition. He was in a place where simply being a foreigner made him noteworthy. Grey's cover story was one that any European businessman such as 'Carlos DiGriz' would be reasonably expected to carry out. DiGriz, an upwardly mobile mid-level manager with Strasser Investments, someone with more aspirations than money, was returning from interviewing several promising young enterprises in the Rize area with an eye toward funding some of them for international expansion. DiGriz's travel itinerary included a brief layover in Istanbul with an already booked and paid for flight to headquarters in Geneva, then back home to Madrid. If pushed, Charlie was perfectly ready to enhance his story with a few details including some hookers in the better whorehouses of Rize, tales that he could 'plead' with the authorities not to share with his nonexistent 'wife'.

On the other hand, he couldn't afford to be wrong about this; not with what he was carrying. Sergeant Charles Grey had in his possession a small digital memory card containing information that would create something of a stir if it should be released into the hands of the United Nations. It would create even more of a stir if leaked into the world media, and Grey wasn't about to make the decision himself to say whether that would be a good or a bad thing. That was his superiors' headache.

His other option was to get off of this train and make his way to Istanbul by other means. Not the most secure way to travel, he reflected. Not all parts of the countryside were safe, and getting off the train before he was supposed to would be a blatant signal to Mutt and Jeff in the other seats that Carlos DiGriz was exactly what they feared him to be: an agent of a foreign power. One move toward repossessing his travel pack before the end of the train ride and the pair would be shoving guns into his spine.

Okay, not an option. Charlie decided to see just how alert Mutt and Jeff were, and just how interested they were in his movements. He pushed his hat back up onto his scalp where it belonged and rose to his feet.

Yup, there they were. Mutt nudged Jeff in the ribs. Jeff came awake with a grunt, his eyes automatically seeking out Grey's position before carefully settling down into a posture of disinterest. Both tried to look as though they weren't scrutinizing every step Grey took.

Bully for them. This was just the 'feeling out' time. Charlie ambled toward the back of the car, taking his place in line for a chance to use the facilities before returning to his seat next to the student. The kid, in the past three hours, had coursed through all of six pages before falling asleep himself. Charlie's short trip woke the student up, and he dove back into his chemistry. Charlie himself pulled his cap back over his eyes and settled in to peer at his opposite numbers through the rip in the hat.

He had four hours to figure out how to dump them without getting caught.

* * *

"Just the three of you?" The boat owner's voice reflected his doubt.

Robert Browning, vice president of RC Communications, Inc.—or so his business card and passport said—grinned. "What's the matter?" he asked good-naturedly. "Our money isn't good enough for you?"

"Of course, of course!" the boat owner hustled to say, visions of thousands of Euros fluttering away with a disgruntled Canadian going to the boat owner's competitor. "It's just, I mean, perhaps a few more crew members…"

"Three will be plenty," Mr. Bradford assured him. "We have sailed before."

The boat owner, one Stavros Krakitopolitis by name, aimed for a smile that both acknowledged Bradford's words and sought to put them into perspective for the three Canadians who were clearly very new to this part of the world. "I can see that you are experienced sailors," he lied, eyes bright. "But you are on holiday, no? Perhaps someone to serve in the galley, prepare meals fit for persons such as yourself? I have many acquaintances who would be happy to provision my _Athena_ with fine wine and cheese, the finest to be had in Alexandropoulis…" He trailed off again, hoping that these foreigners would take the hint and hire some crew that he could trust to bring his yacht back in reasonable condition.

It wasn't just the sailing that Krakitopolitis was concerned over, but the piracy that was all but rampant in this part of the Aegean Sea. Stay close to the Greek coastline, and all would be well but travel further out to sea and it would be well within the boundaries of imagination for another boat to come alongside and demand the contents of the larders. RC Communications, Inc. would be fortunate to end up merely paying a king's ransom for its three executives to be returned in a still breathing condition. Krakitopolitis himself would be out one somewhat aged yet still expensive yacht that he would find difficult to replace. Would these fools have anything more deadly than a fish hook to protect themselves? The one who called himself Bradford was an impressive specimen, and Krakitopolitis had no doubt that the man could play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules but that would do him little good for pirates who would shoot first and decide later if they wanted their questions answered.

These three seemed determined to hire only the boat and no crew. Krakitopolitis plastered yet another smile onto his face, realizing that no amount of hints or outright demands would change the minds of these foolish Westerners, and added a hefty deposit onto the lease against the loss of his yacht. Argue too much, and the trio would seek to fill their sailing needs elsewhere. The season had been lean, and Stavros's wife was complaining.

The third, a man with short hair that translated as red in a certain light, brightened. "If you've got some good places for provisions, I'm all ears," he told Krakitopolitis. Was that a hint of an Irish brogue? Krakitopolitis couldn't be certain; his English simply wasn't good enough to distinguish among the various accents and he hadn't seen the third man's passport for additional hints. Nor did it matter; Krakitopolitis had heard that the Irish immigrated around the world almost as much as the Turks. In addition, Krakitopolitis had never heard of RC Communications, Inc. For all he knew the firm could be and most likely was an international one, utilizing people from all over the globe.

Again, it didn't matter. The deal was done, and the money was already transferred into Krakitopolitis's proverbial pocket. "Good fishing," he told the three. "I will see you back here in two weeks."

* * *

By now Grey had established the fact that he had a weak bladder. Three trips down the aisle in as many hours, the last at approximately two in the morning. Grey appreciated having an aisle seat; he would have disturbed the student next to him if needed, but he didn't really want to have to interrupt the kid's slumber.

Not once had he reached for his travel pack, the only luggage he'd brought with him. Traveling light was how everyone did it these days; a change of underwear and a toothbrush, maybe an extra shirt for meetings. An actual suitcase meant tracking down lost luggage and a backpack meant rapid transit through an airport. It fit Charlie's cover persona as a businessman looking for investment opportunities on the cheap.

His pair of 'minders' were still watching him. Charlie could see their eyes stray in his direction over and over through the peep hole in his cap. He stifled a smirk; they were getting as little sleep as he was. Every time Charlie stood up for another trip down the aisle, one would wake up the other, just in case. Charlie could see the annoyance growing on both of them. They'd expected to share the watch and catch some z's during the train ride, and Charlie had ruined that little joy. He could easily imagine the terse discussions between the pair: _Is he really a spy, Dmitri? That's what they say, Alexi. Me, I'm not so sure. Wake me only if he takes down his pack_. So Charlie made a point of taking down his travel pack and shifting some of the goods around inside, just to further muddy the waters, feeling the annoyance seep over into outright displeasure from the two.

Charlie let his gaze shift over to the window beyond his fellow seat mate. It was dark out, with only half of a moon to light the landscape. They'd traveled a bit inland, not so close to the Black Sea shoreline, in order to take a more direct route toward the bridge across the Bosporus. Trees dotted the area in thick groves with only the occasional field of growing things to hold his interest. How close to Istanbul were they? Charlie couldn't tell. Another five hours at least on the train ride, but that would be deceiving as to distance. The train would slow as the villages grew closer together, and a constant rate of speed had never been a high priority for the engineer. The signs outside also made little difference. Grey knew his knowledge of geography was better than ninety percent of Americans but he defied anyone not from this area to keep track of the little villages that they had passed.

He sighed. He'd be sorry to leave his travel pack behind. He'd picked up a little hand-crafted pin for Hector to give to Annie, something from the bazaar in Rize. The acquisition had fit his cover persona, and he was sure that between them both he and Hector could hide the thing long enough to get it past the noses of their superiors who'd rip them a new one if they found out about it. Bringing home souvenirs was a good way to blow a cover back home, but Annie knew the score. She'd keep their secret safe, and enjoy the laugh.

Ah, well; that laugh would be left behind along with the travel pack. Under the circumstances, Charlie would have to be satisfied with not leaving his corpse behind.

He stood up once more, this time timing it so that there were a good half dozen patrons waiting not so patiently for a chance at the facilities. He could feel the eyes of 'Alexi' follow him down the aisle, and this time 'Alexi' hadn't bothered to wake 'Dmitri'.

Charlie shifted his features into a downward frown, just to be certain that he hadn't indulged himself in a satisfied smile. He hunched his coat over his shoulders, swaying in time with the motion of the train, waiting his turn at the facilities. He turned sideways along the aisle, allowing a previous bathroom patron to edge past him, and took advantage of his position to eye his opposite numbers.

Success. The pair were facing the other way, one asleep and the other pretending to be. Charlie carefully stared out the window as 'Alexi' surreptitiously pulled out the same mirror he pulled out the last three times Charlie had developed a 'weak bladder'. Even in the meager light of the train it flashed briefly, enough so that Charlie knew that he was being watched. Not a problem; in fact, Charlie was counting on it.

He moved forward in line, another passenger heeding the call of Nature to queue up behind him. Not yet; it was an older woman, small and squat and nearly invisible in black cotton cloth swathing her entire body. Charlie politely indicated for her to precede him. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, never mind that the rest of the people in line were boors.

The next passenger to arrive for the rest room was more of what Charlie had in mind: a large man with an equally large coat kept on in order to ward off the oncoming winter. The man easily dwarfed Charlie's own stature. Charlie waited another few moments to be certain that 'Alexi' couldn't see him beyond the large man and that the counter-spy hadn't panicked. Charlie wouldn't put it past 'Alexi' to decide that he had his own 'weak bladder' in order to keep his eyes on the prize.

Not this time. A second large man joined the queue, and the group shuffled forward as another passenger reached the finish line.

Time to go. Charlie swiveled his head around, surveying the territory and giving off signals that said 'gonna find one that's less crowded'. He slipped past the rest of the line and headed for the juncture between train cars, easing himself into the night, standing on the meager platform between the two cars.

The cold hit him like a shock wave, and he hastened to close the door behind him. No use in advertising to Mutt and Jeff that Elvis had left the building. A blast of cold air would surely reach the pair and wake them up. Charlie quickly buttoned up his own jacket, knowing that his fingers would soon be too cold to welcome that activity.

How fast was the train traveling? Charlie estimated some fifty kms per hour, about forty miles per. Just a little fast for his taste—no, wait. Good Fortune was headed his way in the form of a gentle curve in the train tracks. The train slowed in order to stay on the rails.

Charlie jumped. He aimed for the brush which would cushion his fall, rolling into it shoulder first, tumbling over and over to slow his speed. Once there, hidden in the bushes, he came to a complete halt, unmoving. There was no way to tell how long it would be before Mutt and Jeff discovered his absence but if it was sooner rather than later he didn't want them rushing to the outside platform to see a whole bunch of shaking bushes as one 'Carlos DiGriz' escaped from their supervision.

It was only when the train was a distant memory that Grey allowed himself to unroll from the dark ball that he'd ended up in. Now he could afford to grin. Listening to the sounds of the night around him told Grey that he was quite alone—which was fine with Charlie.

* * *

"Nice boat," Mack Gerhardt commented once they were out of earshot from the dock. "You picked a good one, Jonas."

"All Bob's idea." Blane gave credit where credit was due. "He spotted it. He did the deal."

"He get us a good price?"

"Damn good price, considering this rowboat has a fair to middling chance of going home as a cartload of splinters."

"Not on my watch," Mack grunted. "Swimming with sharks is not my thing. You remember that, Jonas."

"Will do, Mack." Jonas hefted a crate, muscles bunching, and dropped it where it needed to go onto the main deck of the _Athena_. "You got enough supplies to last for a while."

"I took Bob fishing once," Mack grinned. "Trust me on this, Jonas: we're gonna need all of these supplies. He's still a growing boy."

"I heard that!" floated up from below decks. "Just for that, Mack, you can clean all the fish I catch."

"And that's supposed to be a threat?" Mack waggled his head ruefully. "I expect to lounge on deck, baking in the sun, while you're on K.P. duty, boy." He surveyed the coastline. The docks were rapidly receding into the distance, almost indistinguishable from the buildings beyond. The tall Greek skyscrapers of Alexandropoulis, while not in the same class as New York or London, still gave off their own sort of grandeur, graceful smoke plumes rising into the air against wispy white clouds. His mood changed: back to business. "How long before we hear from Hector?"

Jonas glanced at his watch, a large and ornate gold piece that shone from his wrist; just what the successful CEO of 'RC Communications' might wear. "We'll give him a call once we're another two hours out." He too scanned the horizon, looking for other ships. There were three sails within eyeshot, taking advantage of the gentle breezes to carry tourists and local fishermen out further into the Aegean. Crystal blue water lapped at the sides of the yacht, the motor down below a quiet hum to power them to where they needed to be.

Jonas lifted out a wheel of cheese, purchased by Mack at the local market, handing it off to Brown to be placed in the fridge below. A couple loaves of crusty bread followed, along with a jar of olives.

Then he lifted out of the crate what he was looking for: distance glances. Binoculars with an attitude, that could see clearly for more than a mile until the sight dropped off over the horizon. Under that lay the communications gear. Jonas took more care with that; it would need to be powered from the yacht's engines, and taking time to repair anything damaged in transit was time that Jonas wouldn't have for relaxation.

It wasn't often that Alpha Squad got a mission in a place as beautiful as this, and Jonas Blane intended to take whatever enjoyment he could.


	2. Go To Ground

It wasn't quite living off of the land, but it was close enough and there was a need.

There were two objectives left to this god-forsaken mission, and Grey fully intended to adhere to both: deliver that memory card to his superiors and deliver himself back to base alive so that the taxpayers wouldn't be out one very expensive soldier. One of the bean-counters back home had impressed upon him just how much money had been spent teaching one Sergeant Charles Grey his trade, and it was more than Charlie brought home in a year. Charlie had been impressed, so he asked for a raise.

The resulting jokes had gone on for another three months.

Nobody was laughing now. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he was supposed to have checked in, and he was certain that there was a level of concern back at the TOC. Not too much, not yet—failure to call in could simply be someone in an uncomfortable position—but notes would be made and contingency plans drawn up. His people kept an observer or two in the area; not that Charlie knew who they were, only that they were there as a matter of standard operating procedure.

Wouldn't do any good. Those observers would only be able to report that businessman Carlos DiGriz had met with three of the local businessmen and then left, ostensibly to head to the airport at Istanbul for the flight home.

None of them knew that Charlie Grey had slipped out of his hotel room in the dead of night to meet with a member of the Georgian government. If the Russians knew that he'd pointed a camera at a certain member of the Russian Federation Council, a camera with a very long distance lens on it peering into a certain room in a certain hotel located in South Ossetia, they'd be more than a little upset. If they'd known at the time, then one of the tanks surrounding that certain hotel would have engaged in a bit of night target shooting.

The camera was a loss. Grey had been given fairly broad discretionary powers as to the scope of the mission, because no one back home knew quite what he would be getting himself into. 'Go and find out' was the mission parameter. Well, Charlie had gone, and he'd found out more than he'd expected to. He'd taken a few pictures of the businesses as cover, but that wouldn't last long. Anyone seeing the real pictures would have destroyed the camera, the photos, and Charlie along with them.

So Grey had dismantled the camera into its constituent components and gotten rid of the pieces. A few pieces had ended up in the dumpster, another pushed into the potted fern in the lobby of his hotel. Someone else had had the same bright idea, and Charlie thought that the other sharp metallic object in the potted fern was actually part of a PDA. _Get too many more spies around here_, he thought, _and some kid will be able to build a laptop from the spare parts_.

The digital memory card, however, stayed with Grey. That contained the intel and it was sure as shooting going home with him, and Charles Grey didn't mean Madrid.

All of which meant that Grey could easily make the top of someone's shoot to kill list, and he wasn't talking about the Mutt and Jeff geniuses that he'd dumped on the train. Those two were just the routine flunkies assigned to a fishing expedition. It was the way of paranoid government agencies, to follow a certain percentage of foreigners on the off chance that something else might be going on. They could have just as easily been assigned to some businessman in Istanbul instead of Charlie. Lady Luck had grinned at them and sneered at Charlie, and cast Charlie into the nets of the unlucky. No, now that they knew that he had something to hide, the Powers That Be would assign someone with a little more on the ball to track him down.

Not that he'd had any choice. Grey was well aware of standard operating procedures under these circumstances. Had he continued on to Istanbul as planned, he would have been pulled aside for a more intensive 'search' simply because the pair had failed to find anything unusual while following him. Both he and his luggage would have been exposed to some heavy duty magnetism to erase whatever data he'd acquired. If he insisted on a separate search by hand, to prevent that from happening as would any businessman concerned about a valuable laptop, they would have gone through all of his files and found the memory card.

Not acceptable, which meant that serenely traveling through Istanbul was not going to happen.

_Hope for the best; plan for the worst_. Best scenario: it had been several minutes, possibly even an hour before Mutt and Jeff realized that their quarry had escaped. That would leave some thirty miles of track where Charlie could have jumped, which meant several hundred miles of terrain to search for him. Worst case? Five minutes, translating into a mere three or four kilometers of possibilities. Still not too bad; Mutt and Jeff would then have to wake up their superiors in order to obtain additional manpower to search the area. The longer it took, the further away Grey could be. The further away he was, the more options. More options meant better chances for success.

It was up to Grey to turn those chances into reality.

Food. Water. Shelter. Not hard; Grey was skilled at sneaking in the dark and no one in the local village seemed eager to stroll the streets at three in the morning. Grey did his 'grocery shopping' and withdrew to the local forest to catch a few hours of well-deserved rest in the arms of a large and welcoming tree. Bread and cheese filled the empty spot in his belly.

Damn good cheese.

* * *

The mini-sub commander grinned at Hector Williams. "Ain't she a beauty?"

"Sure is," Hector agreed gamely. "Where's the rest of her?"

Hector looked at the small, torpedo-shaped vehicle resting in the bay of the USS Determination. Everything about the vessel shrieked _tiny_ and Hector wasn't about to bet that he couldn't tote the thing to the beach on the top of his car. It would hold the commander and himself and not much else. Even the well-waterproofed container would be lashed to the side, slowing their forward momentum but not taking up any room.

"You said you needed something to get you in and out without being noticed," the commander reminded him. "This thing is small enough to pass for an over-sized dolphin. You figuring on adding another pile of luggage?"

"No. No," Hector said, still staring at the vessel. "I'm just hoping you left room inside for the engine."

The commander snickered. "Let's just say that this is one of the Navy's experimental models, and leave it go at that. Ferrying you in and out without getting noticed is going to be something in the nature of a field test. You did see the science types back on board the Determination?"

"Sure did. They were scary. I've never seen so many clip boards in my life." Hector still couldn't believe that something this size existed and could still carry passengers.

"Then get in, my good man. Let's go make history."

* * *

"Hammerhead. Come in."

"Hammerhead here, Snake Doctor. Everything still a go?"

"Everything is still a go. Coordinates as previously discussed. Awaiting your arrival."

"Arrival in twenty, Snake Doctor. Hammerhead out."

* * *

There was something else that Charlie Grey needed, and the first place he burgled didn't have it: a cell phone. His own had been left behind on the train. The tracking chip had been disabled before ever leaving America, but Charlie wasn't about to trust that someone hadn't put in another. Maybe he was being paranoid, but hey—they really _were_ out to get him. He'd left the cell on the train, sliding it into his travel pack that had likewise been left there. Anyone trying to track him would be led to Istanbul and the lost baggage area of the train station, and that was assuming that the pack had been turned in and not stolen on the spot. Charlie grinned to himself; wouldn't it be interesting to see the thief get confronted by a bunch of well-armed and highly pissed intelligence officers? If only he could be a fly on the wall…

The second place had been a close call. The home owner had a dog, one with an over-developed sense of guardianship, and had started barking as soon as Charlie had eased open the door. Charlie had quickly closed the door and withdrawn. The dog had been a big one and would have roused the entire neighborhood had not the owner shouted sleepily at it.

Discretion was the better part of valor. Charlie chose to be discrete, and move on. There would be other towns, and other cell phones. He resolved to look for a tourist trap, some place with well-heeled visitors that he could mingle with so that his lack of the local tongue wouldn't hamper him.

In the meantime, it couldn't be that far, could it?

* * *

Hector Williams allowed the water to flood the compartment where he'd spent the last three hours in the mini-sub. It was the mini-sub's version of an airlock. His only communication with the sub's commander had been via very weak radio waves that wouldn't travel any further than two meters away, not that they'd had much to say to each other.

Time for action. The water was cold but mild compared to what Hector remembered from the coast of Maine. It was also crystal clear; Hector could see quite a distance, saw a large school of sardine-sized fish with a four foot shark swimming lazily along the bottom beneath the school. Hector floated up and out of the compartment where he'd sat, closing the hatch behind him.

The equipment came next. Williams slipped his knife out of its sheath to slice through the ropes that bound the waterproofed package to the side of the mini-sub, noting as he did that the commander had already begun to empty out the passenger compartment and refilling it with air from the compression tanks. Had there not been a re-breather in his mouth, Williams would have snorted. The air had been getting somewhat foul, and he could just bet that the commander was eager to remedy that little part of the trip. The trickle of bubbles was tiny, so as not to attract the attention that a large blast of air might have. The mini-sub had been built for extreme covert operations.

Not Williams's problem, and he dismissed the mini-sub from his thoughts. There was the bulk of the mission to be gotten through, and the knowledge that the mini-sub and its big mama were out in the open seas was a comfort for later.

He slipped the long flippers onto his feet and took up the ropes to the waterproofed package, towing it along in the general direction of the yacht in the distance.

* * *

Mack Gerhardt held up a large sea trout, the trophy flopping in the net that Mack had used to keep it from wriggling its way back over the rail of the boat. "Well, lookee here. Dinner has arrived. Something a mite better than frozen steaks, wouldn't you say, Bob?"

Bob grinned, leaning back in his deck chair. "A man gets tired of eating fish all the time, Mack."

"Really? Let me know when you start, Bob. We've been out on the sea for all of three hours. Me, I'll be eating fresh fish that you'll be cleaning."

"Me? Clean a fish? I never—"

"That was the bet, Brown," Gerhardt growled happily. "I catch 'em, you clean 'em. You catch 'em, and I'll clean whatever you catch. Catch anything besides a sunburn, Brown?"

"It's early yet—"

"Package is arriving," Blane interrupted from his position as lookout on top of the _Athena_. He lowered his field glasses. "Look alive. Port side."

Both Mack and Bob dropped the horseplay, Mack slipping the freshly caught fish into a bucket of ice before joining Bob at the port rail. Something dark in the water several feet down approached, and resolved itself into a long, man-shaped object towing a package.

Bob grabbed the fish hook, scooping the long handle down toward the water. Williams draped the ropes over the hook, looping them once again to prevent slippage. While Brown hauled up the package that Williams had swum in, Gerhardt tossed a rope ladder over the side, giving Williams a hand up and over the rail.

"Welcome aboard, Hector," Bob greeted the man, Williams pulling the latex hood off of his head and spitting out the air valve.

"Just in time for dinner," Mack added with a sly look toward Brown.

Williams brightened. "Fresh fish?"

"The freshest. It was swimming in the same water as you less than ten minutes ago."

Blane clambered down from the lookout deck. "Any trouble getting in?"

"Not a soul around," Williams assured him. "Nothing on radar, and nothing that I saw. I got in clean."

"Good." Blane turned his attention to the package that Williams had brought. "Let's get that stowed, just in case somebody stops by. Wouldn't want the locals to get a serious case of envy."

* * *

It was almost a sin, how easy it had been. Grey had walked in to one of the hotels on the beach in a little tourist town called Komkoy, pretending to be one of the guests. He ambled around on the fifth floor until he saw a guest leave his room, then picked the lock in order to let himself in and help himself to a few 'new' clothes, just enough to justify being at a tourist resort. A bit of rifling through the luggage turned up a wad of Euros; Charlie carefully took only half so that the man wouldn't suspect anything until much later.

What he was really after was the man's cell phone. There it was, on the table next to the laid out set of clothes. The man had been on his way to sun himself on the bright white sands, to bake under the rays and relax. Charlie picked up the phone and eased himself over to the large bay windows to watch the man's progress.

The man, very nearly Charlie's own height although substantially larger around the waist, joined a woman at the edge of the sand, making his way closer to the water with his arm possessively around her waist. Charlie grinned: two possibilities. One, it was the man's new bride. Two, it was his mistress, and of the two Charlie knew which possibility he wanted it to be. A little bit more misdirection would only help.

Charlie noted where the couple dropped themselves, turning his attention back to the man's cell phone. He would need to keep an eye on them, need to remove himself from the room should the man decide that an afternoon quickie was next on the agenda. In the meantime, there was a call to be made and it would require preparation.

Charlie opened the back of the cell phone, using the man's toiletries as makeshift tools to get it open. There were chips to be altered, tracking devices built into every cell phone, very useful for people who got themselves into accidents and lost on mountains but also useful for governments to track whoever they wanted to. It wasn't hard for someone with the appropriate type of knowledge to bypass that little chip, and Charlie had long ago made certain that he had that knowledge. A few twists of tiny screwdriver originally intended for the emergent repair of eyeglasses, and it was done.

Now for the dangerous part: the call itself. It was a given that someone would be listening for a call just like this one. The question was: would they stumble onto it? There were literally millions of cell calls being made at any given moment, and the number of people required to listen to every one was astronomical. On the other hand, Charles Grey was a wanted man, and someone knew that he was in this part of Turkey. That would narrow down the odds, and not in Charlie's favor.

It wouldn't get any better by waiting. Charlie dialed a number that he'd never dialed before but knew like the back of his own hand.

"Yes." Not even a question. Simply a response, an invitation to speak further.

"Betty Blue. Astroturf. Bug out: delta delta epsilon."

"Bug out: delta delta epsilon," the voice repeated. "Got it."

That was all. Charlie disconnected the call and looked for the couple. They were still on the sands, oblivious to what was going on in this room.

They would stay oblivious, if Charlie had his way. Grey plunged the cell into a sinkful of cold water, wiping away the excess water along with any fingerprints that he might have left behind, satisfied that the destruction of the interior by the water would muddy the trail back to his contact.

Betty Blue: his code name.

Astroturf: today's verification sign.

Delta delta epsilon: a rough estimate of where he was. No one overhearing the call, either accidentally or deliberately, would be able to work out where Sgt. Charles Grey was. Only someone with access to his mission files would learn his approximate location. The code words had been set up well in advance, just in case extraction from the mission did not go as planned.

Grey was going to need help to get out of Turkey, and the call to the Triple A had just been made.


	3. Job Well Done

Midnight, Greek Daylight Savings Time.

The _Athena_ had been blacked out, all lights doused. As far as any onlooker could tell—if there had been anyone close enough on the water to wonder—all the inhabitants of the boat were fast asleep, enjoying the aftereffects of a full evening repast of sea trout and ouzo.

Not so. In fact, there were _four_ sailors rather than three, and all four were wide awake with the contents of two pots of coffee to ensure that they would stay that way for as long as needed.

One was on top of the yacht. He had opened up a tripod with a camera fastened to it. The camera had a lens attached to it that was long enough to make a swordfish green with envy. It had to be: the pictures that were to be taken were nearly half a kilometer away, and in the dark. Through the miracle of technology, Bob Brown expected to make it happen. It required technology just recently out of the experimental lab and it required a power source, but it was going to happen.

Beside him, Jonas Blane kept watch with a set of high-powered night goggles. There were a number of large creatures swimming in the waters around the yacht, but Jonas had learned to separate the sea creatures from the land mammals by the way they moved through the water. Side to side were the sharks, hunting for prey. Up and down were the dolphins. Neither one tended to use a flutter kick with two feet for propulsion.

Those were just two of the yacht's temporary owners. The other pair were on the main deck, their attention likewise focused on the same ocean acreage. Like Brown, Gerhardt had a tripod set up but this one didn't support a camera. This one braced a rifle with a barrel long enough to drill for oil.

This particular weapon had started life as a standard M24 before Gerhardt began his 'improvements'. Several of those improvements were currently undergoing testing in certain secret facilities across America with an eye toward providing them to other soldiers, but that didn't slow Gerhardt down. This was his baby. 'When it positively, absolutely has to be killed overnight,' was his motto for this baby, and when this mission called for a single shot to be dead center, this was the weapon that was going to do it. There weren't going to be any second chances. There weren't going to be any allowances for the boat constantly riding the waves up and down. All the automatic this and that's weren't going to be able compensate for the fact that this was going to be a damn difficult target to hit. Hector Williams, beside him, had tugged that hunk of iron in with him, and Mack Gerhardt had spent a good two hours after dinner making sure that no salt water had gotten to his pride and joy.

Williams himself had a second pair of night goggles aimed at the target zone, backing up his team leader. "Boat coming out from the shore," he murmured.

"That our target?" Mack readjusted the scope yet again. Nerves, more than anything.

"Looks like it." Williams didn't take his eyes away from the dark water.

"Look alive," Jonas hissed from on top of the yacht. "We have bogies at eleven o'clock." He turned to his man on the camera. "You getting this, sergeant?"

"In my sights," Brown murmured, his attention on getting the focus to come clear. _Click:_ Lovely picture of the small boat rowing its way out from the shore. _Click_: the sole man in the rowboat was dressed in dark clothing unsuitable for this time of the year but very in keeping with someone not wanting to be seen. _Click_: close up facial shot, suitable for framing and for placement on Interpol's Top Ten Most Wanted List if this didn't go the way they wanted it to. _Click_: the _Delphine_, a sixty-footer that was quietly headed toward the rowboat from the open sea, its engines muffled and yet still audible across the waves, her name painted in white across the bow. _Click click click_: at least three men manned the larger boat, one gesturing to the others, in charge and paying the bills. Brown took another couple of portraits of the head honcho. They couldn't afford to let that one stay unidentified.

Jonas kept his night goggles trained on the scene. He saw the three from the _Delphine_ hand down four crates to the man in the smaller boat, saw the man adjust the positioning of those crates so that the smaller boat didn't tip over. Jonas noted how the smaller boat suddenly required more water to stay afloat, how heavy the crates were to cause the water level to rise against the wooden edge. He tightened his lips. If he hadn't been certain of his intelligence before, he was now. Those crates contained weaponry, heavy arms that would end up in the hands of people who didn't much care about the rights of others. That small boat certainly wasn't taking on four crates filled with down from a duck. Not with that much weight.

Brown was taking almost constant pictures now, filling the camera with additional photos to make a damning case against someone. Blane very much doubted that those pictures would ever see the light of judicial day, not with the orders he and his team had been given. Once their part was over, those photos would be given to intelligence analysts who would devise the next objective to be carried out in the war against terror. Not his problem.

"Got enough?"

"Had enough five minutes ago. Working on the next gigabyte of data," Brown grunted.

"Put it up. Mack, you're on."

Down on the main deck, Gerhardt felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, accepted it as part of the adrenalin that would sharpen his senses as far as they could go. "Talk me in, Hector."

Williams began to murmur, soft and soothing. "Last crate, Mack. No more. Man is stowing it away, right in the center of his little row boat. Big yacht turning, heading back out to sea; it'll be out of reach in three minutes."

"Don't care about that bastard. Talk to me about the little guy."

"Putting the oars into the locks. Sitting on the bench. Taking the first stroke."

The wake from the _Delphine_ slapped gently against their own yacht, causing it to rise up and down.

"Boat's not moving fast; too much weight. Hanging low in the water, Mack."

"Maybe it'll sink, and I won't have to do this," Mack growled irritably. He stared through the scope, hands rock steady. Waiting for the right moment. Waiting for everything to come together. Timing was everything.

_Crack!_

The dark figure in the boat slumped over. The rowboat stopped its forward movement.

"Clean," Jonas reported from on top of the yacht. He finally lowered his night goggles. "Let's go home."

* * *

_Any other time, darlin', and I'd be all over you_.

Charlie Grey sighed, and let another hot chick slip away into another man's more than willing grasp. There were several of them; there was a singles' cruise in port and nearly half of the passengers, bored with the other half, had poured into the little Turkish seashore village of Komkoy in search of more attractive prey.

This one had been just begging for him. Blonde, tall, with enough leg to wrap around him twice and then some. French, too, and half drunk on ouzo. He could have taken her up to her room on board the cruise ship and hidden out in comfort for the next two days while waiting for his bosses back home to get their collective ass moving.

No screwing around on this trip, _hombre_, he reminded himself. _Not unless you want to end up with more hands on your ass than just hers_. He had that damn digital memory card to protect and while he could cover it over with a swimsuit, butt-naked was going too far. Counting on the ouzo to fade the memory was a little more risk that he was prepared to take.

He leaned back in his chair, watching the people around him, taking refuge in the darkest corner of this bar and wondering how long it would be before his Euros ran out and he'd have to steal some more. He didn't look forward to it; he was good at it—picking locks was a joy unto itself—but every time something got reported to the local police, another signal ended up heading toward the big boys who were looking for him.

So far he'd been lucky. He'd picked his way into an unused hotel room for the night, waking up before the maid in order to shave and shower with more purloined goods and head out to hide in plain sight.

'Plain sight' was important. His people would be looking for him, and the advantage that Charlie had was that they knew what he looked like. The Russians and their stoolies only had the verbal reports of Mutt and Jeff or, as Charlie had come to think of them in his own mind, Alexi and Dmitri.

Maybe he could get in one more check before turning in for the night? Worth a try. Despite the beautiful scenery, foliage and human, Charlie's nerves weren't allowing him to enjoy his surroundings.

He ambled out into the night, taking note of which of the street lamps were working and which weren't, heading past the building that served the majority of the governmental needs for the little town of Komkoy. It was a large and square facility, topped with a Byzantine dome that shone in the sunlight but merely dimpled politely to the moon now that it was nearly midnight. Charlie took note of the various markings that decorated the front steps. Sure, some of it was seagull droppings but others were signals from various intelligence agents to one another. None looked fresh, and Charlie surmised that whoever had left them had completed his mission several months ago. Charlie corrected himself; his own mark, the blue scrape on the third step from the top, was fresh although he'd taken pains to make it blend in with the rest. When his own contact arrived, the contact would put another mark nearby to suggest a meeting.

Charlie sighed. His blue signal remained a singleton.

_The story of my life, dude_. He ambled away down the road, trying to decide which hotel to break into for the night.

* * *

"Watch out for the sharks, Hector my man." Gerhardt cuffed Williams on the shoulder good-naturedly. "I don't want to have to dig my scope out of some Great White's belly."

"Not to worry, Mack," Williams returned. "There aren't any Great Whites in this part of the ocean.

"You sure?" Brown looked up, raising his eyebrows.

"Sure, I'm sure. You think I'm going to swim somewhere where I don't know what's coming after me?" Williams chuckled.

"You just be sure you get to that tin can you came in on." Blane was still nervous. There was a large chunk of data in Williams's waterproofed pack that could get seriously damaged with salt water, and he wasn't talking about Gerhardt's prized weapon.

Williams nodded. "I will, Top. You?"

"We've still got ten days left on our 'vacation'," Blane reminded him. "It'll look odd if we come in much before that."

"Don't want to get tagged as anyone suspicious," Brown added.

Williams hefted his package. "You mean, like being found with a sniper special in your possession?" he quipped. He mock-saluted to his team mates. "See you back State side." He lifted his feet high to avoid tripping on his flippers, and jumped into the crystal clear blue waters of the Aegean.

"Good sailing," Blane called after him, dropping the waterproofed pack in after him.

Williams mock-saluted again from the water and then surface-dove under, a small trail of bubbles disappearing into the waves.

Brown turned away from the water. "That's that." He stretched, cracking his knuckles loudly. "What'd'ya say, Mack? Still think I can't fish? How about double or nothing?"

"Double what? You ate my fish, Brown. You brought in nothing but your pearly whites."

Blane suddenly perked up his ears, hushed them quickly. "You hear that?"

Instantly silent. "What, Top?"

It came again, a harsh static.

"The radio," Blane identified it, leading the way into the main cabin where their radio sat.

Brown seated himself in front of the box, picking up the mike. "SS _Athena_," he identified himself. This could be something entirely innocuous, perhaps the yacht's owner calling to check on them though at something slightly after midnight he tended to doubt it. "Go ahead."

"Tac four."

All three Unit members stiffened. This was not from a nervous yacht owner. This was why they had a super-charged communications unit hiding under the guise of something completely normal. Brown glanced up at the other two; what had gone wrong? They had kept completely to mission parameters, had done exactly what they had been told to do. Brown twisted the dials, and turned one more, a dial that didn't appear on any commercial radio. "Unit Alpha, over. Secure channel."

"Secure channel, Unit Alpha," the voice acknowledged. "Hold for the Terminator."

"Holding."

It didn't take more than three seconds for the familiar voice of Col. Ryan to come on. "Unit Alpha," he said crisply. "Mission status?"

Blane took the comm. mike. "Mission complete. Package en route to mama."

"Acknowledged. New mission. Acknowledge receipt."

"Receipt acknowledged. Define mission parameters."

There was a hesitant pause, and Jonas felt a small frisson of fear race through him. Colonel Thomas P. Ryan was not one to sugarcoat bad news and he wasn't one to hesitate over the truth. "Snake Doctor, we have located a missing man in your area, somewhere in Turkey, along the western coastline. Mission parameter priority one: obtain the data that he is carrying. Parameter priority two: retrieve the agent. Acknowledge."

"Mission parameters one and two, acknowledged." Blane exchanged a glance with the other two. What wasn't Ryan telling them?

"I will contact Mama Bear, instruct them to return Hammerhead to your team as soon as he passes on the package. I will also instruct him to bring back more forks and spoons for your use. Do you agree, Snake Doctor?"

Gonna have Williams bring back some heavy duty weapons? What did Ryan have in mind? Not that Blane objected; they would come in handy if a few wanna-be Captain Jack Sparrows showed up. "I agree, Terminator. Will he also be bringing details of the new package to be acquired?"

"Uh, that's a negative, Snake Doctor. More intel will not be needed."

"Sir?" That little bug bite in his gut was rapidly turning into a full fledged ulcer.

"Snake Doctor, the package is Betty Blue."


	4. Vacation Fun

Under better circumstances, returning here would be great. Beautiful foliage, great looking architecture. Charlie could see renting a villa on a quiet beach down the road a bit, stocking it with good wine, and bringing something curvy and willing with him. His thoughts drifted to Annie; what would it be like if Hector hadn't gotten to her first? If his beeper hadn't gone off just at the wrong moment? He shrugged at his own thoughts. It wasn't as if he was going to try to muscle in on her. Hector was his brother, and Charlie couldn't do that to his brother.

On the other hand, a place like that might be a little pricey. Splitting the cost with his brother in arms might be the thing to do, and letting two women go shopping in these little bazaars that this tourist trap boasted would work while he and Hector indulged in some scuba diving or rock climbing. Yeah, he could see doing that, once the furor over one Carlos DiGriz died down.

This whole place, however, was starting to prickle. There was something going on, something that was riling the Komkoy natives. Charlie sipped at his drink, using the movement as an excuse to survey the territory, and didn't like what he saw. There were more _men_ here today than yesterday. They were taking pains to seem like tourists—gawd, was that floral Hawaiian shirt awful!—but tourists they weren't. Each one was maneuvering through the crowd like a shark through a school of anchovies, cutting groups in half and eying the remainder with a cold black eye.

The natives knew it, knew that something was happening in their quiet home town. The bartender kept polishing that one glass over and over again. The desk clerk in the lobby kept bobbing up and down like a jack in the box. Even the three boat captains at the dock, normally out hawking for passengers to spend the day looking for dolphins, stayed calmly on board and tried not to attract attention.

Step one: do nothing. The fastest way to get caught was to run. Running would alert the out of town talent that he was here.

How had they found him? Didn't matter. It was probably more luck, or they had simply ruled out every other possibility. Charlie knew that it would happen eventually, but he had hoped that he'd have another day or two. That someone from 'Strasser Investments' would have shown up with a new identity for 'Carlos DiGriz', and bailed him out of this mess.

Charlie calmly finished his drink and stood up. As he expected, three sets of cold eyes settled on him, then carefully looked away, not certain if he was the one that they were looking for. Charlie ignored them. He ambled outside into the warm afternoon, heading toward the small shops and street stands, as any bored tourist might do.

Followed? No. Charlie almost breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn't identified him yet. They thought that he was in the area, but they didn't know for certain and they didn't know exactly what he looked like. Close, but no cigar.

Time to take a hike, set up shop elsewhere. It would mean another call to the back up number, and would mean finding another cell phone to make the call, but that couldn't be helped. Charlie turned his steps toward one of the roads heading out of Komkoy—and then abruptly turned around when he saw the pair stationed at the edge of the line of buildings. They were there for a purpose, and that purpose was to stop anyone with Grey's general appearance for questioning.

Damn! One avenue cut off, and if this avenue was cut off then it was likely that others were, as well. Grey was boxed in.

Not completely. There were two more options: by land and by sea, and he wasn't talking Paul Revere coming down on horseback to ring his chimes. No, if Charlie Grey was to hire one of those boats to take him off shore for a day of whale watching, perhaps the Turkish Feds would get tired of not finding him and go look somewhere else. That, however, would take more Euros than he currently had, and picking someone's pocket under the baleful eye of these dudes was not something that he intended to do.

That left land. Overland, to be more exact, over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house, as the kid's song went.

So much for his little blue signal on the steps in front of the Komkoy government building. It was a given that it would be watched closely. Going there would be an offer to give himself up.

Okay, how to get himself into the woods? Most of these buildings had thick stone walls around them, a holdover from the Middle Ages when it was needed to prevent the bandits from coming in to rape and pillage. Grey could hoist himself over those walls but it would be a trifle obvious.

Better: Grey headed toward the white beach outside the hotel that he'd stayed in last night. With luck, one of the hotel clerks would recognize him as someone who had roamed through the lobby yesterday. A perky wave, and he'd establish himself as a tourist rather than a fugitive. Maybe he could find Genevieve, the blonde from last night? Had the singles' cruise ship put out to sea yet? Maybe he could revise his plan to stow away on the cruise ship as an escape route. Worth a try. Charlie headed for the beach.

He pulled off the sandals that he'd stolen, slinging them over his shoulder, pretending that he was just another tourist entranced with the beauty of the beach. Grey paused to nudge a broken shell with a bare toe, picked it up and flung it into the gentle waves breaking along the shoreline.

Nobody seemed to be watching him. Good. Another quarter mile of beach, and he'd come across the docks where hopefully Genevieve's ship still waited for its newest passenger to board. If that didn't happen, he could 'amble' further up north along the coast until rocks forced him into the wilderness. From there, he could take off. Once in the woods, the only way they'd bring him down was to set a pack of dogs on him, and Charlie Grey knew how to confuse a bunch of canines.

* * *

Brown he stationed on top of the _Athena_ with the field glasses. There was no more time to pretend to be vacationing fishermen; they had places to be. Blane motored the yacht out to sea to shorten the time spent picking up the fourth member of the team.

Gerhardt hauled up the waterproofed package that Williams brought back with him. "I trust you brought more ammo back with you."

Williams swung his leg over the rail, dripping onto the main deck. "Plenty of ammo, Mack. Six M16's. Half a dozen grenades, just in case."

"In case of what?"

"Whatever." Williams shrugged. "We're talking Betty Blue here, Mack. Who knows what we're going to need?" He swayed with the boat; Blane wasn't wasting any time heading east toward the Turkish shore. He followed Gerhardt into the interior of the cabin, pulling off his wetsuit as he walked.

Brown came in a moment after them. "Think he might be on one of the islands?" he asked. "Cannakale, something like that?"

Mack studied the map. "Not likely," was his opinion. "Not too many ways on and off. Carlitos would want to keep his options open."

"I agree," Blane put in, his attention still on the waves crashing into the front hull, making best time. "Our man will always try to keep his options open for as long as possible. He wouldn't want to be tied to one means of transport."

"Which means that he's on the Turkish coastline," Williams agreed, "unless he managed to sneak over the border into Greece. Top?"

"If he had, he would have contacted someone," Blane said blandly. "You have the most up to date intel, Hector."

"Which was already some twelve hours old," Williams said, stifling a groan. He peered at the map. "I'd say that we've got some thirty miles of coast to explore. How are we going to cut that down, Top?"

Blane spared enough attention for a quick glance over his shoulder at his team. "I'm not," he said cryptically. "You are. You and Bob."

"Me?" Brown knew better than volunteer for anything, and he didn't recall volunteering to explore all thirty miles of Turkish coast.

Sgt. Blane issued orders. "Mack, I want you up top. Watch out for anything that might slow us down; anything official looking which will require us to set up housekeeping to keep under the radar. Bob, Hector, I'm assigning the pair of you to retrace our man's route. He was last heard from in Rize, along the Black Sea. That's a fair distance from both the western coast and from Istanbul. Set up the most probable route and probable transportation, then decide where he's most likely to be based on your best assumptions. Go to it."

"Aye, Top."

* * *

Grey left the docks behind. Sweet Genevieve was gone with her singles' cruise, off to live the life of luxury for three more days until the ship harbored back in Italy. A chance overheard remark told him that he'd missed the cast off by a mere two hours. If he'd just put two and two together a little faster…

No help for it now. It was the woods for him, with another foray into the life of crime in order to acquire enough money to get him some place else fast. It didn't really matter where he ended up; Komkoy was getting too hot for him to stay. He spotted two more men scanning the crowds on the street just beyond the docks, and another two at the other end. Charlie ducked down onto the beach, the hot white sand a good six feet down below street level. For the first time in a long time, Charlie blessed his lack of height. Jonas Blane would have been spotted, towering over the dunes leading from the water to the town.

It would be a good mile to the end of the beach, a mile with rocks to crawl over at the end before the dark trees beckoned with groves of bushes for hiding. Charlie tossed a glance over his shoulder; uh-oh. Two men, looking acutely uncomfortable in suits, were mincing their way over the sand, destroying some fine Italian leather as they questioned some of the sun-worshippers in their path. One such pointed in Charlie's general direction.

_Crap_. Charlie picked up his pace just enough to keep from being noticed.

Sheer luck: a dark-haired Miss Universe First Runner Up came jogging along the sand, pony tail flying in the wind, sweat coursing down tawny skin. Her skimpy two piece bathing suit hugged her curves like honey on baklava.

_If this isn't the best piece of luck…!_ Charlie fell into step beside her, keeping up easily, swearing that he would never skip his routine five miles with this as the reward. He pulled off his shirt and tucked it into his waistband for safe-keeping. "Hi, gorgeous." _No fear. They'll all be looking at her, not me._

"_Buenos tardes, senor." _Good afternoon, sir, with just the right amount of caution in her voice. A bit of puffing, too; either this was the end of her workout, or those curves came more from diet than exercise. Charlie didn't care. He could certainly keep up his end of the conversation.

"_Te gusta esa playa?"_ You like this beach? If he could keep her going for another ten minutes, they'd be at the end of the sand. Even if she insisted on turning around and going back, he'd be that much closer to his destination and escape.

"_Si, mucho_," she told him. Yes, very much. "_Y mi esposo le gusta, tambien_." She wiggled her ring finger at Charlie, demonstrating the diamond-encrusted wedding band that encircled the finger. "_Alli esta_." And there my husband is, coming for me. He likes the beach, too.

Charlie sighed. "_Es un hombre muy afortunado_," he told her with sincere regret. Such a fortunate man.

In more ways that one; Charlie turned around to run backward, giving a wave as if saying good bye to good friends. He spotted the pair coming after him, saw that they'd been joined by two more who equally miserable about getting sand in their expensive shoes. This was _so_ not good; with a final wave to his new 'best buds', husband and wife, Charlie turned back around to 'finish his run'. He'd be able to easily outrun the four down the beach, but this whole episode would cut down on the lead time. Charlie had been counting on a good couple of hours at least to muddy his trail, and now it looked as though he'd be lucky to stay fifteen minutes ahead of them.

He was getting boxed in, and he didn't like it. Someone, somewhere, was thinking very clearly. Someone had a fair amount of training in the same sorts of planning that Charlie Grey had, and had used that training to figure out how to trap him.

Charlie stretched his legs, making every step count, putting more distance between him and his pursuers with every second. No need to hide; being out in the open, running on the beach, was hiding enough. He passed another runner heading back the other way, straight toward the group of suits. Charlie wasn't the only jogger on the beach, and if he played it just right, he could look like every single one of them. He could disappear into the crowd, and then across the boulders marking the end of the beach. He put on a small burst of speed, catching up with a group of three, winking at one whose tongue was hanging out.

The tongue pulled back in, and the jogger tried to persuade his tired body to cooperate for just a bit longer. Charlie sympathized; he usually felt that way around the fifteen mile mark. He coasted ahead of the tired runner, allowing the man to partially shield Grey from the view of his pursuers. Charlie became one of four instead of a singleton. _Safety in numbers…_

The boulders loomed. The other three slowed and turned, the tired one lifting his hand as if to ask if Charlie was going to run back down the beach with them.

"Sorry, man," Charlie told him. "Nice running with you."

The man blinked; he didn't understand English.

Given time, Charlie would have tried another language or two. French usually worked when English didn't. Time, however, was one thing that was in short supply. He clambered up onto the boulders, wondering if the suits carried guns and were prepared to use them. Probably…

The little itch that Grey associated with a target painted on his back died down as he finished crawling over the rocks with no bullets fired. Maybe they wanted him alive, had orders not to shoot? That was not reassuring.

The trees were less than a dozen yards away. Charlie put on another burst of speed, wanting the security of the brush to hide him. Fast, that's what was needed at present. Fast enough to leave them in the dust, to win himself some breathing room in order to plan a more successful place to hide.

_Blam!_

It sounded like a shotgun, harsh and loud, designed for maximum force over a short distance. Even as he identified the sound Charlie tripped over something entwined in his legs. Slender ropes scraped across naked flesh, twisting around his arms, sending him helplessly to the rocky ground.

A net. A damn net, fired from a gun, bringing him down like a rabbit herded into a damn trap.

Pretty accurate comparison, too. Grey himself had been herded here. All those men in the village of Komkoy were placed there to flush him out, and Charlie Grey had gone just exactly where they'd wanted him to.

_Damn_. How the hell was he going to get himself out of this one?

* * *

"We got trouble, Top," Mack called down from atop the observation deck of the _Athena_.

"Can we go around it?"

"Don't think so. They're coming in pretty fast."

"Damn." Couldn't be helped. "Official?" Blane started to slow the engines for boarding. It could take hours to satisfy either the Greek or the Turkish patrols that they were simply vacationers out for a few days of fishing. Passports would be looked at, papers would be examined, and there was a good chance of more than a few Euros changing hands. Blane didn't look forward to the experience. They were under cover, and that meant the opportunity for mistakes. And if the patrol captain decided to search the boat for contraband? There were drug-runners in this area as well as black market gun dealers, and the guns that Hector had brought back with him would do more than simply slow Blane and his team down.

"Not unless officials have decided to cut their flags from their budget," was Gerhardt's response.

Blane picked his head up. "Pirates?"

"Unless you know of any patrol boat that looks that skuzzy?"

Blane pushed the throttle forward. "Can we outrun them?"

"We can try." Doubtfully. "Nope. They're already catching up. They'll be on us inside of ten, Top," Gerhardt warned.

Not as though his team had a choice as to what to do. Swimming the last few miles to Turkey was not an option. "Williams, Brown," Blane ordered, "get out your gear. Prepare to repel boarders. Fire on my command."

Brown shoved the maps into the drawers so they wouldn't float away in the breeze. Williams opened the makeshift weapons locker, hauling out the M16's and tossing one to Brown.

"Those guys are in for a rude awakening," he commented, a small smile playing over his lips.

"Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people," Brown returned. He handed another weapon up to Gerhardt on top of the observation deck. "Top?"

Blane accepted his own gun, placed it with the safety on in a spot where it wouldn't slide away from him. Both hands were needed on the wheel, keeping the _Athena_ headed toward the Turkish coastline. There was no land in sight, nothing to suggest that they were getting close. This whole little slice of life was taking too long, and they had places to be. "Let's make this short and sweet," he told them.


	5. Idiots on Land, Idiots on Sea

"Name," the man demanded.

Grey spit out a wad of blood, wishing that it had gone far enough to land on the man's shoe. "Go to hell."

"What are you doing here?"

"Who do you work for?"

"Who is your contact?"

The questions kept coming, over and over, with a blow for each one that he failed to answer to their satisfaction. There were a lot of blows.

Kicks, too. Sometimes he'd end up on the floor, he had no idea how, and they'd kick him for a while. Change of pace. Broke some ribs, knew that for a fact, and it didn't matter where Genevieve's ship was at the moment because crawling into bed with anything more cuddly than a syringe filled with morphine was going to be out of the question for the next week.

One good thing: most of these bozos were low level low-life types. Didn't know their asses from their elbows. They were pretty good when it came to beating someone up, but they didn't know how to interrogate. Just a straight forward, beat 'em up sort of talking to. Charlie could keep this up for days. Passing out helped. Couldn't feel anything then. Charlie made a point of passing out every chance he got, curled over his pain.

Idiots didn't even know about the memory card, let alone try to find it.

* * *

"Here they come," Gerhardt shouted down from his vantage point. Adrenalin was riding him hard. His weapon was pointed at the lead man in the attacking pirate vessel. "Top…?"

"Hold your fire," Blane shouted back, serenity in every word, keeping his second under control. "Let 'em get closer. Sucker 'em in."

"I see twelve people on board, maybe more," Brown called out from behind a post.

"Definitely more," Williams corrected. "Can't tell if anyone's down below."

Brown watched the pirate ship pour on the speed. Not fair, he thought petulantly. That thing was built for speed. The _Athena_, which had seemed so nice when they hired it, was built as a rich man's plaything. Speed was good but luxury was better, was her motto. Well, some of that rich mahogany wood was going to get a bit of the polish taken off if those bullets came too close, and it really looked as though that was going to become a reality.

Twelve pirates, four Unit soldiers. Three each, but only if Top could take his hands off of the wheel and pick up his gun to shoot. _Better count on taking out four each, Bob me boy_, Bob chanted to himself. How about starting with the one with the bad teeth and a ripped shirt?

"Top…?"

No doubt about it; Mack definitely wanted to start shooting _now_.

"Wait for them to fire the first shot," Blane warned him. _Rules of engagement_.

"It's gonna be close…"

_Crack!_

The first shot tore a hole through the side window and straight out the front. Cold air washed in, tearing more chunks of glass out of the windshield protecting Blane's face.

The return fire took on an almost steady rhythm, bullets shredding the pirate hull. Two of the enemy were killed outright, their bodies lost overboard and left behind in the wake of the two speeding vessels. Another fell back to the main deck of the pirate vessel and was dragged to the meager safety of the cabin by his fellows.

The rest of the pirates took cover behind shielding already in place. They began to pop out, one by one, each firing another shot into the _Athena_, trying to take down one of the Unit soldiers.

"Seems as though they've done this before," was Blane's shouted comment. He ducked as a bullet whistled too close for comfort and lodged itself in the wooden molding. _That'll come out of the deposit..._

"They're getting closer!" Gerhardt yelled. "They'll be on us real soon!"

Not that one. Brown fired, and saw to his satisfaction that another pirate was now experiencing a close encounter with the Aegean Sea without benefit of his boat.

"Phase Two," Blane ordered, as calmly as if he deciding how the chef should serve the steak tonight. "Pins, gentlemen."

Brown and Williams pulled the pins on two grenades, holding down the firing pin with their thumbs. Above, Gerhardt kept up a steady stream of bullets, more to keep the pirates behind cover than to actually take down another one of them.

"Start the countdown, Brown," Blane said clearly.

Of course. Top couldn't see the pirate ship behind him, not and keep his attention on the hazards ahead. "On three," Brown shouted. "One. Two. Three—"

Two small and round objects flew through the air. One fell on the main deck of the pirate vessel, and the other tangled itself in the deck ropes around the shielding barrels.

_Blam!_

The shrieks from wounded pirates were only the beginning. The pirate ship itself cried out in agony, the planks splintering as the ribs of the hull split under the strain. A secondary explosion sounded as water rushed into the engine room, and the motor coughed and spluttered. The _Athena_ rushed away, her own engines gleefully chattering smoothly.

"They're sinking, Top," Gerhardt reported, still peering through the scope of his rifle. "Damn, but that was a big explosion. You sure you boys only tossed in two grenades?"

"Just two, Mack. Maybe we hit the fuel tank?"

"Doesn't look like it. Top, we're gonna have move if we want to have converse with those scumbags. Boat's scuttled. It's going down fast."

"Ain't that a shame," was Blane's only comment. "How fast?"

"Not fast enough for my tastes."

"Can we get on board?"

"They're not about to stop us. You have something in mind?" Gerhardt was already setting up the excursion with a warrior's insight.

"I do. I'm certain that those men don't spend all of their time at sea, not with a rowboat such as that. A little information as to where they spend their leave time might be worth something to our folks back home, and these boys can give us some information as to what to expect as to the land where we're going to be hunting for Betty Blue." Jonas swung the wheel around, bringing the _Athena_ back toward the sinking vessel. "I'd also like to know just how far some of those boys can swim."

* * *

Consciousness seeped back into being, and all Grey could do was regret it.

Cold concrete floor. Nasty smell of mildew, growing in the standing water. A stray beam of light wriggled through the small barred opening at the top of the cell, showing that the walls of his cell were four inches thick and that the bars weren't about to collapse with rust.

There. He'd said it: cell. Prison. Hoosegow. It wasn't the first time that Charlie Grey had been locked up, and he devoutly hoped that it wouldn't be the last. He was still hoping for another few decades of life, and getting killed while on assignment here in Turkey would seriously interfere with those plans.

Apparently they'd decided to leave him alone for a bit. Mixed blessing. It also could mean that they didn't think they could get anything out of him, and so they were sending for the big boys.

Maybe he should think about leaving, like now?

Sure thing. Just as soon as his knees would consider cooperation instead of dumping him back onto the floor.

He did a swift check of whatever he could see. There were bruises all over, chest and stomach, down his legs. He didn't want to look under his shorts—it was sure to look ugly, with boot sole marks stomped into flesh—but he had to. He had to make sure that the memory card hadn't been found.

There it was: safe.

But for how long?

The lock on the bars taunted him. Easy lock to pick; real tough to reach from this spot on the cell floor, and any movement was a bitch.

* * *

"Anybody comes on board, Top, and we're gonna have some tough questions to answer," Brown reported. "Those bullet holes are gonna be tough to miss."

"So we lie," was Blane's answer. "They shot at us. We outran them. We ran for our precious little over-paid lives. It was our duty to our company to preserve our lives. Our boat was faster."

"They gonna believe that?" Gerhardt asked doubtfully.

"As long as they swallow it for as long as we need to find Betty Blue, we're set," Blane told him. "We wrap up the M16's, pretty as you please, and let 'em hang in the water with the anchor. The hand weapons will be easier to hide, under chairs and such." He turned to the younger pair. "What do you think? Where did Betty Blue light?"

Brown took the lead. "We figure he tried to get as close to Istanbul as possible. He had tickets for a flight back to Geneva, and a ticket for a return trip on the train from Rize. At some point he jumped off of the train. Since he went for the western coast of Turkey, we think it was somewhere here." Brown pointed to a spot along the Black Sea coast with his finger.

Williams took over. "He needs to hide, so he avoids the main roads. He needs to get to the coast where there's more civilization and more options for travel, but not the Black Sea coast. It would be more difficult to arrange a pick up there. Instead, he chooses the west coast, closer to Greece. This road, here. And this one." Williams used his own finger to trace the most probable route.

"And that leads him to here." Brown ended up on a spot on the Aegean coast.

Blane peered closely. "Which town? There are three in the same spot: Burkoy, Bayramici, and Komkoy."

"Don't know, Top," Brown had to admit. "We could be all wrong about this. By now he could be in some totally opposite part of the country. Maybe he was able to get across the border into Greece. I don't think he'd try Syria," he added thoughtfully.

"He hasn't crossed the border," was Gerhardt's take on it. "If he had, he would have let someone know."

"So how do we find him?" Williams asked.

"Let's look around," Blane decided. "Let's get a feel for the land. Spend a little time in some of the bars, see if Betty Blue comes to us." He made a command decision. "Mack, hit this first one, Burkoy. Hector, you have Bayramici. I'll take Komkoy."

"And me?" Brown was feeling left out.

"Bob, my boy," and Blane put a long arm around Bob's shoulders, "this little tugboat with the bullet holes is leased in your fictitious name. I'm gonna leave you the pleasure of explaining to the authorities how it came to be in this condition."

* * *

"Mr. DiGriz."

Someone took him gently by the chin, turning his head this way and that, clucking over the injuries.

Charlie remembered that DiGriz was supposed to be his name. He also remembered that he was supposed to be a milque-toast businessman, looking for a quick ticket to the top of the management pyramid. "Don't hurt me," he whimpered, impressing himself with how easy it was to make it sound realistic. "Don't hurt me. I'll tell you whatever you want, just don't hurt me."

"That's good, Mr. DiGriz. May I call you Carlos?"

Charlie offered up a moan of agreement. It seemed to fit.

"Carlos, why were you in Georgia?"

"Wasn't in Georgia," Charlie slurred. "Went to Rize." He coughed, blood springing to his lips, the cut there opening under the strain of speech.

"Of course you were in Georgia, Carlos," the voice urged. "You were seen. Someone saw you there."

_Lie_. The voice was probing, trying for a weak spot.

"Rize," Charlie insisted, his swollen tongue refusing to pronounce the words properly. "Rize. Don't…know…what you're talking about…Georgia." Could he manage to pass out again? It would probably be his best option.

"Carlos, I don't want these men to hurt you again."

_Sounds good to me. I don't want them to hurt me again, either_.

"You must tell me the truth. Who did you meet in southern Ossetia?"

_Must be the Russians or their allies behind this._

"Met…Gheorgie…in Rize…" Charlie licked his lips, hated the iron taste of congealing blood on them. It was the truth, and part of his cover. Gheorgie Kukcic had a jewelry store there, and 'Mr. DiGriz' had asked about importing. These idiots could verify that easily, if they wanted to.

They didn't. Something dug into Charlie's side, something blunt and harsh, and it sent waves of agony through him. The scream that came out was entirely real.

In the blackening haze Charlie heard, "too much, fool. He's going into shock. Now we'll have to wait to question him again."

This was not good. This man had tools. This was someone who knew how to question a prisoner. This was someone who was going to take his time and break Charlie down piece by piece until he got what he wanted. This was someone who would eventually get around to doing a thorough exam of a helpless captive, and would find where Charlie hid the memory card. Even dying wouldn't prevent that from happening.

Charlie Grey was in deep shit.


	6. New Guys in Town

Arrival at the port had been surprisingly easy. Customs barely looked at their papers and didn't seem to notice the yacht's new ventilation system.

All very worrisome. There had to be something going on that had upset the locals in this sleepy little tourist trap. A murder, perhaps? Something that might drive away the tourists?

"Jonas?" Gerhardt asked the question with his eyes.

Blane changed the plan without notice. "Stick close. Let's feel our way through. We'll split up, but don't get too far away. Brown, you're with me. We'll head south. Mack, Hector, try north."

"Right." The other pair ghosted off into the crowd.

Brown looked around. This port belonged to the tourist town of Komkoy, a sleepy little nowhere on the Aegean that nevertheless eked out a decent living by catering to the wealthy and well-tanned. The _Athena_ was by no means the most expensive yacht moored at the docks, nor was it the least. Brown was satisfied that his temporary acquisition would fit in without being noticed.

Half the passersby seemed to be tourists, most dressed in clean and comfortable khakis and polo shirts, with a few in more traditional Middle Eastern garb. Several of the shops seemed to boast fine embroidered vests, and a small part of Bob longed to pick up something to bring to his wife back home. He almost did it; it was what a businessman would do while on vacation. He could get away with it, could justify the purchase in terms of his cover. Some nice little bauble; he could even legitimately put it on his expense account.

There wasn't time. He wasn't a true businessman, and it was more important to locate Betty Blue than to maintain his cover. Brown could feel the urgency and fear and tension all around. He tried to localize it.

Yes. There. And there as well. Men all around, carefully dressed in white polos, trying to fit in and failing utterly. It wasn't the clothing, but the eyes. Tourists scanned the area, but not with cold black stares that trapped every single person there.

Not tourists. Members of some authority, pretending to be under-cover types. This many, probably belonged to Turkey in some fashion, but maybe not. Brown paid attention to hubbub and murmuring around him.

Short phrases came through:

"He was here last night. I'm sure that was the one. I heard they found him."

"Couldn't have, or else why have they not left?"

Someone else, in the bar, speaking French: "Charming, _oui_, and good looking. Still, best not to get involved. You and I are not citizens in this country."

Then something a little more alarming: "I hear they're bringing in the dogs. They tried to get Razuul's dog to track him. The dog sat and howled. They're bringing in more dogs, dogs with experience in hunting down men."

Brown could put two and put together to come up with Sgt. Charles Grey. He deliberately relaxed his shoulders, trying to look like a vacationer without a care in the world for the next week or two. He caught sight of someone who might be Charlie—right height, right hair color—but dismissed him in the next moment. Close, but not Charlie. Beside him, he could feel Jonas do the same thing, and knew that the older man had spotted the same doppelganger.

Too many watchers. Blane found himself an outdoor table, ordered tea and pastries with an invitation to Brown to join him. Blane lifted his cup to his mouth, sipping gingerly at the hot liquid, dark eyes piercing through the crowd in search of one man.

"He's not going to come out, Jonas. Not with all these," Brown hunted for the right word, "men around."

"Quite right, Bob." Jonas took another sip.

"How are we going to find him?" Bob kept his voice down.

"I'm open to ideas."

"Somehow I don't think parading through town is going to help."

"I agree with you on that point." A longer draught this time; the tea had finally accepted the fact that it was going to cool off. "However, the fact that so much interest has been focused on this one small place surely has to mean something. I will congratulate you and Williams on a job well done."

"Thanks, but how will that help us?"

"It's a start—" Jonas broke off. "Don't turn around."

Brown froze, then carefully unfroze himself. It was the slightest of gestures that could give away a cover and a tourist on vacation was not likely to freeze in concern. "You see him?"

"Not exactly," Jonas breathed. "Do you recall a meeting last month? We discussed a certain gentleman who deals almost exclusively in small arms, both foreign and domestic?"

"What, you mean Andre Zelink—"

"The same," Jonas interrupted. "I'd always wondered what part of the world that reptile hides himself in."

"Do you see him?"

"I do. Don't turn around," Jonas ordered again. "Just move your chair a bit."

"Better; I've got a window behind you. Better than a mirror." Brown stared at the window over his cup, trying to weed out the shadows behind the transparent glass to see the man that Blane had spotted.

Andre Zelinko was surprisingly small for the position that he had worked himself into. Brown himself would top him by at least half a head. Dark, curly hair with skin blending into the variety of tones that the Turkish population boasted, the man wore clothes that had been tailor-fitted and proclaimed the ill-gotten gains that he had received for his dubious business. Yet it was the eyes that distinguished him from the crowd around him, eyes that evaluated each human contact in terms of either prey or adversary. Brown had seen the man's photo in more than one mission op file, and only now realized that those photos, of necessity, left out one major identifying feature: humanity. Zelinko had none.

Brown leaned forward as if to make a point. "Don't suppose we could bring the puppy home and keep him?" The words were only half facetious. "Why do you think he's graced us with his presence?"

"I've a couple of ideas," Blane admitted.

"Could one of those ideas have to do with the number of handsome young Turks I see all around us? The ones who seem to be watching everyone and everything?"

"They could."

"Could it have something to do with a certain lovely going by the name of Betty?"

"Indeed." Blane punctuated the word with another sip of rapidly cooling tea. "I am also considering whether or not our earlier encounter with a number of sharks might be part of the discussion."

That stopped Brown. "You think?"

Blane leaned back in his chair, continuing to scan the crowds, taking care not to let his gaze sink unduly on any one particular individual. "I do a great of thinking, Mr. Brown. One of my ideas has to do with how convenient it would be for someone to transport small arms from one country to another if they had a fast boat as our friends did."

"A little routine piracy on the side would do wonders for beefing up the bank account." It all made sense. "It would also account for the excessively large explosion that sent the sharks to the bottom. An extra keg or two in the hold really went a long way."

"A long way down," Blane agreed blandly. "But how does our friend by the name of Betty fit into this situation?"

* * *

He wasn't going to get very far, that was a given. Charlie still didn't remember picking the lock to the cell, but he must have. There was a bent spoon in his hand, something that had been twisted and torn into the proper shape for digging into the massive lock on the old padlock, and Charlie must have been granted an immense quantity of luck for it to work.

He had received equal amounts of good fortune for his legs to carry him out of the building, and Charlie didn't think that he ought to push it any further. A hiding place was needed.

There it was: bushes. Thick, sturdy rhododendrons, growing up to fill the sky and everything below. Crawl in between the thick trunks and collapse.

Sure. That would work. He could figure out where he was tomorrow.

* * *

"Snake Doc?"

"Go ahead, Dirt Diver."

"Be advised: proof positive that Betty Blue has been in this area. Repeat: signs of Betty Blue."

"Acknowledged, Dirt Diver. Timeline?"

"Unknown, Snake Doc. Estimate less than twenty-four hours. Will continue to investigate."

"That's affirmative, Dirt Diver. Additional information as follows: a friend has come to join us in town."

"Say again, Snake Doctor? A friend?"

"That's affirmative, Dirt Diver. His name came up in conversation over a month ago, in response to a hunting trip. If you see him, give him my heartfelt regards."

"Understood, Snake Doctor. Dirt Diver out."

* * *

Mack Gerhardt closed up his cell. He turned around so that he could both face Hector Williams and scan the area behind them for bogies, knowing that Hector was looking over Mack's shoulder to do the same. "Jonas has seen someone, someone whose name has come up recently."

"That covers a lot of territory, Mack." Hector could see four pairs of supposedly 'covert' teams in the area, all trying to appear as ordinary tourists admiring the architecture of the Komkoy town hall. Hector wasn't buying it. The architecture was lovely, but didn't require more than three or four minutes for thorough appreciation.

"Right. But he's got Jonas all hot and bothered. Keep your eyes peeled."

Hector nodded, frowning.

"Something worryin' you?"

"Yes." Hector continued to search the territory, not seeing the man he was looking for. The blue signal on the third step of the concrete stairs leading up to the town hall blared like a siren to him and to all the 'covert' agents around.

"Care to share?"

Hector pursed his lips. "I think I'm in the mood to buy some real estate, Mack."

"Whatever floats your boat, Hector." Game, Gerhardt followed his colleague as the man made his way further north along the dusty road. Long legs carried them both toward the edge of the town proper, heading toward several picturesque villas carefully positioned on equally picturesque cliffs. Walls surrounded the villas, looking entirely in character for the area, enclosing small pieces of privacy to be purchased for those willing to pay.

"You got it right, Hector," Gerhardt muttered. "They're coming after us. How do you want to handle this?"

"Top wants us to keep a low profile," Hector returned under his breath. "Not a problem. I got the answer to my question. They're not going to let us leave town. They afraid that we'll find someone?" He raised his voice. "Good day, gentlemen," he addressed the pair bearing down on them with more energy than any 'tourist' ought to possess. "Lovely town."

"There is nothing down that way," one of the men said firmly, squashing any hint of him actually being a tourist. "What are you doing here?"

Hector allowed his patented look of wide-eyed innocence to cross his face. "I'm thinking of investing in some real estate," he offered. "I have a lot of friends who would like to spend some time here." He gestured toward one of the villas. "Do you know if that one is for sale? How much do they want for it?"

"It is not for sale," the man told him. "None of these properties are for sale. Go back to town."

Gerhardt shrugged. "Might as well," he said. "You got any suggestions for a good bar in town? I've only seen the one so far."

"They are all good. Go try them out."

Gerhardt winked good-naturedly. "I'll do that, friend." He gave a mock wave. "See you around."

He waited until they were a good several yards away, well out of hearing distance from the pair and from any other passersby. "Want to tell me what that was all about?"

Hector answered that question with a question. "Walls all around. Guards turning people back. Want to tell me how Betty Blue would be able to leave town without getting caught?"

A grim smile spread across Mack's craggy features. "So you're saying that he's still here."

Hector spread his hands. "Unless you have a better idea."

"You think you know where he is?"

"I'm his roomie. I know how he thinks."

"And you think he's nearby."

"I do."

Mack nodded his head thoughtfully. "At a minimum, all this security narrows down the area that we need to search." Then he frowned. "It narrows it down, both for us—and for them."


	7. Setting the Scene

Nice as this place was, Charlie Grey couldn't stay here forever. For one thing, room service was a little slow. For another, there was no bed in this little nook underneath the rhododendrons. The sole advantage—overwhelming though it was—was that it had successfully hidden him from his pursuers for an unknown number of hours.

Daylight; that meant that he'd slept away the remainder of the night since escaping from the clutches of the authorities. After the beating that he'd taken, he'd needed it. Movement was still pretty dicey, but he now had a fifty-fifty chance of walking more than ten yards instead of seventy-thirty against.

Water, that was the big thing. His tongue felt swollen, to go along with his lips, and only part of that was due to the number of fists smashing into his face. The rest was his body screaming for fluids in order to replenish the blood loss.

First things first. Charlie peered through the thick green leaves of the rhododendron, trying to figure where he was. Reconnaissance was of prime importance if he wanted to pry himself out of this mess. It was a given that they were still looking for him. They had no reason to stop; they would only stop if they found him, dead or alive, and Charlie had no intention of giving himself up.

Dead or alive he had a choice about. Alive was definitely preferable, and to remain in that condition he would require water. There was a whole bunch of it just over those rocks, but those rocks were located across a large plaza filled with people who would be more than happy to reintroduce him to the authorities that he'd escaped from. In addition, the water beyond those rocks had a significantly salty taste to it, a taste that he could do without. No, Sgt. Charles Grey was in the mood for something a little less briny. While he was at it, he might as well hope for someone to throw a couple of ice cubes into the glass.

Another hour, he decided. It would be close to dusk, with a better chance of slipping away unnoticed, to find better accommodations. Charlie settled himself down to wait, doing his best to convince himself that he really wasn't all that thirsty.

* * *

Andre Zelinko strolled down the pier, observing the various yachts that had moored there, admiring the polish on this one, the mast on the sailing vessel over there. The sun was bright, yet the day was not over-hot as it could have been. The cool breeze wafting in from the water had something to do with it, he admitted to himself, bringing the pleasant scent of salt water to his nose.

His people were tardy. Zelinko understood very well that a timetable down to the minute was not possible when one relied on the sea, but this was verging on six hours after the scheduled appointment. Had the captain of the vessel decided to go into business for himself? The shipment of small arms would fetch a desirable sum on the black market. Zelinko was quite certain of that fact, since he himself had just arranged to sell those very same weapons for that exact price. Failure to deliver the goods would be a black mark against his name.

He did not like this. Andre Zelinko most assuredly did not like what was happening around him. There were too many unanticipated events. First, he had learned of the spy traveling from Rize to Istanbul. It had been a stroke of luck that the man had been spotted through routine surveillance by the Turkish government, and an even greater stroke of luck that the low level agent had chosen to pass that information on to Zelinko himself. The man had been well-rewarded; Zelinko knew that having many such people sprinkled throughout the Turkish government would help Zelinko to continue doing business. There had been evidence that someone had spied on Zelinko himself as he negotiated a deal with some of the South Ossetians of Georgia some three days previously. His people had found a footprint in the dirt outside, a footprint suggesting a better made shoe than most Georgians possessed these days. From there it was only a minor leap of faith that the man caught here in Komkoy was the spy.

The locals had attempted to question the man. Zelinko had put a stop to that exercise immediately, paying off the locals with enough Euros so that more than one could retire wealthy. Zelinko could afford the graft; actually, he couldn't afford _not_ to offer the graft. There were fortunes to be made, and that meant that he needed the locals to stay out of Zelinko's business while he arranged those fortunes. However, the initial damage had been done. The locals were clumsy, trying to extort information from the spy through mere physical torture, and ham-handed torture at that. The spy had taken advantage of their stupidity by slipping into unconsciousness and then escaping from the decades-old prison cell in the basement of the town hall before Zelinko could do more than say hello.

Zelinko resolved to rectify the matter. The reward he offered set every one of the locals out watching for the spy, and Zelinko added his own people to ensure better coverage. None had found even a trace of the spy, but Zelinko was patient. There were walls around houses and thick forests and men posted at the ends of the town, and there was the sea to cut off one entire avenue for escape. The spy could hide, but he would not evade Zelinko forever. Zelinko need only be patient.

His patience, though, did not extend to his men at sea, the ones who were currently ferrying the shipment of Kalashnikovs from Point A to Point B. He would have sharp words for the captain if the man had permitted his crew a premature celebration with ouzo. A sharp knife would do equally as well. Zelinko believed in rewarding good behavior, and he believed in equivalent rewards for bad.

His eyes roved over a yacht recently arrived in port, an older yet still lovely vessel that wore a Greek flag off of her mast. Vacationing fishermen, then; many such roamed the Aegean in search of relaxation. Like others before them, the men had likely grown tired of eating their own cooking and had stopped into this little town for a change in fare and perhaps some female companionship while apart from their wives. It was a common enough scenario; the yacht in the slip next to it had moored three days ago with the same story. Zelinko had stationed a man on the pier with instructions to monitor this possible escape route for the spy and had received details about several of the visiting boats.

He found his attention caught by an imperfection in the hull. Zelinko frowned; it was an odd spot not to be smooth. There was always the possibility that someone had been careless with a boat hook, gouging out a divot in the wood, but this still looked odd. In fact, it looked like a bullet hole—

"Can I help you?"

Zelinko looked up—and _up_. The speaker was much taller than Zelinko himself, and dark-skinned almost to black. Zelinko recovered himself quickly. "I am admiring your boat," he told the man and, improvising, added, "is it for sale?"

"I wouldn't know." White teeth shone in the afternoon sun, almost blinding Zelinko, giving him a clue as to the man's heritage. American, most assuredly. Most others wouldn't bother with dental cosmetics, allowing coffee and tea stains to rule. Zelinko's own teeth were almost the color of his skin. The man hefted a bag of edibles from his shoulder, placing it down on the pier in order to pass the time of day with Zelinko. "It's rented. I could ask the owner, if you like, when we return it." The tall man turned to admire the _Athena_ himself. "You're right; she is a pretty little girl. Cuts through the water nicely."

Information gathering; that was why Zelinko was down here on the pier. "There seems to be a small scratch in the paint," he said, pointing at the divot. "It looks new."

The tall black man peered at it. "Why, so there is. I wonder when that happened?" He picked up his box of groceries. "I certainly hope that the rental place doesn't try to charge us for the damage. The rental fee alone was outrageous."

"Crooks, all of them," Zelinko agreed with a fake smile. Now that he was looking, he could see soot marks along the stern, marks that had likely come from an explosion. There was always the possibility that the engine in back had belched out smoke, but a recent fight with someone—say, a number of people employed by Zelinko himself—could have been the cause. All of his senses were on alert.

Zelinko extended his hand, offering his business card. "Andre Zelinko," he introduced himself. "I may indeed be interested in purchasing this yacht, Mr…?" He let the sentence trail off with an invitation.

"Jonas Bradford," Jonas Blane lied, quoting the name on his false passport. He tapped his breast pocket, then the ones at his hips. "Sorry, fresh out of cards. On vacation, you know."

"Indeed. American?"

"Canadian." Jonas sent up a prayerful apology to whatever deity watched over his cousins to the North. "I'll pass along your card, Mr. Zelinko. It shouldn't be too long; I and my friends will probably set out this evening. Not too much vacation left, I'm afraid." He glanced along the line of similar yachts and speedsters, all neatly tied up to the dock with heavy ropes. "I take it you don't own any of these fine specimens."

"Actually, I do," Zelinko disagreed. He pointed to one of the speed boats, three piers down.

"A beauty." Blane admired the lines. The thing looked like it could collect a speeding ticket on the Autobahn, never mind that it had no wheels. Dark colors, too; it wouldn't stand out against the water like the other speed boats. "What's the name?" he asked, noting the Turkish script on the side.

Zelinko considered, translating the words in his head. "_Rich and Fancy_," he finally said.

"It is, at that," Blane told him. "Why would you want a tug boat like this when you have that charming little speedster?"

Zelinko cocked his head. "Have you seen the price of petrol, Mr. Bradford? You should know better."

"I should, indeed," Blane agreed. "Still, a fine boat."

"Thank you." Nothing more to be gained from this encounter. Zelinko took his leave.

On his way back to his hotel, he made a point of stopping to discuss the conversation with his man that he'd stationed here. Now Andre Zelinko had _two_ concerns about the pier: his missing cargo, and the _Athena_.

* * *

Mack Gerhardt only had a split second to make his move. Timing was everything; he had to make sure that he was out of sight of the omnipresent watchers, that one pair had moved on and the next hadn't yet moved in. He had to be sure that none of the tourist types were curiously eying him, and that none of the locals, hungry for tourist Euros, were trying to entice him into looking at their wares.

Done. As Gerhardt moved away from the dirty wall surrounding one of the town villas, a brand new slender blue streak of chalk was revealed.

Mack stepped quickly into one of those tourist traps, moving away from the signal site, fingering the brightly colored scarf that attracted his eye in order to blend in with the rest of the tourists. _All the wrong colors for Tiffy_, was his first thought. He liked seeing her in pink, maybe blue, something that lit up the color in her cheeks when she looked up at him. He resolutely put thoughts of his wife out of his mind. _Stuff like that gets you killed_, he mused, and concentrated on his cover. "How much?" he asked the shopkeeper, his attention far more focused on the scene outside.

The incoming pair of watchers discovered the blue streak right away, instantly deciphering what it meant. _Correction_, Gerhardt thought to himself, _they were deciphering what they _thought_ it meant_. He turned a big smile on the shopkeeper, completely ignoring the shopkeeper's offer to bargain to a better price. "I'll take it."

Marks like the blue streak were far more common in large cities where intelligence officers and undercover agents of all nations converged. It was a method of communication: put down your mark and pass on the intel to your handler. It had gotten so bad in D.C. and London that the maintenance departments had dedicated an entire three man squad to repainting the walls outside the Capital and Browning Street on a weekly basis, just so that agents could put up new 'talk to me' marks.

Gerhardt accepted the package he had just purchased from the shopkeeper, welcoming the addition to his cover. A second pair of observers had come to observe what the first pair had observed, and now they were all observing together, chattering to each other and chattering into their cell phones. Mack was reminded of a pigeon feeding frenzy in Central Park when some crazy old broad started handing out crusts of stale bread from her park bench. Heads were bobbing back and forth the same as pigeons, too, he thought, trying not to smile. Diversion accomplished.

Stepping out of the shop and away from anyone else, he pulled out his own cell phone.

"Dirt Diver to Hammerhead. You have a go."


	8. Time's Up

Bob Brown slipped from the stairwell to the second floor of the hotel, not liking this assignment one bit. There was too much chance of being seen.

He would simply have to be fast, and careful. He sauntered along the corridor toward the target room, noting where the maid's cart was as she cleaned one of the other rooms. Her attention was not on him, he was pleased to see, and he hustled past the open door.

The lock to the guest room was not difficult, and Brown inwardly cheered. A moment's work with the lock pick from the inner lining of his belt, and Brown was inside and closing the door. Zelinko had left the 'do not disturb' sign on the knob, and Brown again blessed his luck. Zelinko undoubtedly had things in his room that he didn't want to share with the townspeople of Komkoy, and chose to allow the room to acquire a day's worth of dust rather than take the chance of exposure.

That would work in Brown's favor. He checked his watch; he had given himself exactly three minutes to accomplish his task and any other extra that he could manage.

First: clothes. The closet yielded what Brown needed, and he carefully folded a suit and pants into as small a bundle as he could manage. Shirt, shoes, tie—sure, what the hell? Zelinko had so much stuff that he would never miss it.

Next: papers. Brown used the camera in his cell phone—Motorola would be amazed at the high quality of technology that lived inside the little device with their logo on it—to snap shots of a good dozen papers lying on the desk before deciding that his time was up.

He let himself out, carefully re-locking the door behind him. With one hand he liberated a bag from the maid's cart sitting in the hallway, tucking the purloined clothing into the bag and placing the whole bundle under his arm as though it belonged there. He trotted down the steps and through the lobby, giving a jaunty salute to the desk clerk who seemed to think that he was the guest staying in room six hundred four.

Bob Brown didn't disabuse the clerk of his notion.

Mission accomplished.

* * *

Hector Williams closed up his cell phone. The diversion was working nicely; every one of the watchers in the area was converging on Gerhardt's position. Like a bunch of lemmings, he thought, all headed over the cliff. Good.

No, he didn't know _exactly_ where Charlie Grey was hiding, but he had a pretty good idea. Charlie tended to favor two types of places: dark bedrooms that had some pretty girl's name on the rental, or something completely off the radar. If Charlie had gone the bedroom route, then Hector was certain that he would have found some way to join up with the rest of his unit. Charlie had sent out a distress beacon; he'd be looking for whoever had been sent to pull his tail out of the fire. Hector remembered that one time down in Nicaragua, when that dark-haired beauty that Charlie had charmed into hiding him had sidled up to Hector and made an offer so completely out of the blue that he'd—well, that was a story for another day. If Charlie had gotten in tight with another woman this time, they would have known it by now.

That left 'completely off the radar', which meant that Charlie had gone to some place that didn't require registration or even money. The first thought would have been the forest outside of town, but Hector dismissed that idea as soon as he saw how many observers had been set up to prevent just that sort of thing from occurring.

That didn't mean that Charlie wouldn't go for some small hole in the ground. His roomie, as he'd boasted to Mack, was an expert at finding some small spot to hide, something that no one would ever suspect of being capable of obscuring a grown man from his pursuers. It wouldn't be one of the local villas—they came with tall and thick walls, too difficult to get over quickly should someone decide to search house to house. No, it would be some place where Charlie could leave quickly. It was his roomie's style: quick in and quick out. Never leave anything behind.

Hector had a pretty good idea of what parts of this little town fit the bill. He sauntered over to the large-ish store toward the beach side of the square, using sharp eyes to pierce into the shrubbery growing along side of the buildings. It didn't take long to dismiss this particular spot. Right type of place for Carlitos, but the bushes themselves weren't full enough to hide him. Hector ambled on.

Another pair of polo-clad observers hustled past him, on their way to join the others analyzing the meaning of the blue streak that Mack had put up. Hector side-stepped out of their way; they had come out of the town hall, a large building with impressive stone architecture. The building looked to be a couple of centuries old, with a newer addition added on sometime in the last three decades. The garden around it was beautiful; Hector had never seen rhododendrons quite that tall, not even in the southeastern part of the States where people made a habit of adding that sort of bush to their landscaping.

_Bushes. Cover_. _Good possibility_. Hector made sure that he looked like a tourist gawking at the beauty of the town hall as he crossed the square to more closely take in the sights.

_Slow the steps_. A gardener emerged from around the back edge of the building, pruning shears in hand. _Damn. Have to wait until the man was finished_. It had the potential for taking a long time. The man started at the front end of the rhododendrons, clipping and shaping and tugging on the weeds and vines that tried to smother the bushes. Hector wondered how long he himself could get away with 'looking' at the town hall architecture. It was lovely, sure, but not that lovely and not that unique. Five minutes was much more than enough.

It was one of those unpredictable moments that no one wanted to happen, and Hector saw it happen as if in slow motion: the gardener dropped his shears. It wasn't deliberate, it was just one of those things that happened in a random fashion. The heavy metal article slipped from the man's hand, tumbling over just once before tapping the ground with the sharp end and then the handle bounced gently onto a bed of discarded rhodi leaves. The gardener bent down. The gardener reached for the handle—and he saw a bare foot winding in between the thick stems of the rhododendron bush. He saw the rest of the man hiding further back in the bushes.

The gardener's yell alerted everyone.

Hector tensed; what to do? Charlie could fight his way out, maybe run—

No. The man staggered out of the bushes; there was something wrong. Hector could see it in every move he made. Charlie Grey was far from all right. Even from here Hector could see the blood caked on his fellow Unit member's face, the staggering gait that said that Charlie was going to give next week's Boston Marathon a miss.

Charlie took a wild swing at the gardener, nearly toppling them both over. The gardener dropped his pruning shears for a second time and hung onto Grey, visions of a substantial reward floating through the gardener's mind, shrieking and calling for aid.

Hector took a step toward the pair and then stopped himself: no. Too many others converging on the scene. Hector was good, no doubt about that, but the only thing that would happen if he intervened would be that Zelinko would acquire _two_ captives instead of one. An added benefit would be the knowledge that Charlie's buddies were here to retrieve him. Zelinko would have Charlie and any other captive away from here as fast as he could say, "fetch me my car!"

More observer types appeared, yelling and screeching as much as the gardener, each one trying to grab hold of their prisoner to prove that they deserved Zelinko's bonus. They dragged Charlie out of the garden, leaves and all, pulling him up the steps into the town hall, excited over their capture. Charlie himself collapsed into their arms, refusing to give them any help whatsoever.

Even so: Hector caught Charlie's eye just before they pulled him inside. Brown eyes widened, took in the information, and then Charlie deliberately looked away so as not to draw attention to Hector. Message received.

_We are here, brother. We will get you out_.

* * *

"Zelinko will take him apart," Gerhardt predicted. "We don't have much time."

None of them protested; they all knew the ways that a determined interrogator could work when the rules of civilized conduct were ignored. Not one believed that Zelinko would adhere to the Geneva convention.

"Quite right." Jonas unlooped the heavy hemp rope that had kept them moored at the dock, tossing the line back onto the deck of the _Athena_. The yacht gently swayed in the bobbing waves lapping at the shore, already eager to set the proverbial sail and head back out to sea, never mind that she was equipped with a motor.

Hector, his shirt already history and sweat pouring down his back, pulled back on the line and coiled it up. "They're watching us, Top. Nobody sets out to sea at dusk. Everyone leaves in the morning."

"Expected that," Blane grunted. "They'll let us go. They have their man." He stretched out long legs to propel himself onto the main deck from the dock, allowing Brown to give him a steadying hand. "Zelinko would be surprised if we didn't leave. I gave him enough notice."

"Does he think that we have his shipment?" Brown asked.

"He suspects," Blane allowed. "He doesn't know for certain, but he suspects. The only reason that he hasn't pushed the issue is that he's little more concerned with finding out just how Betty Blue figures into the equation."

"Which means that it all depends on how long Betty Blue can hold out under questioning." Brown felt the sting of cold fear go through him. There were ways to frustrate the most determined of interrogations, and none of them were pleasant. At a minimum, they all resulted in more torture of one form or another. Brown resolved once again to get his friend out of Zelinko's clutches as quickly as possible. He put a bit more energy into readying the yacht to get under way.

"As soon as he finishes questioning Betty Blue, he'll be after us," Blane acknowledged, deliberately refusing to consider what any delay would mean to his man. That way led to mistakes, mistakes that could kill more than one of them. Caution was imperative. "Enough time will have passed that he'll know that his pirates won't be docking as scheduled."

"He may even already know that," Gerhardt put in. "It's a good bet."

"It is," Blane allowed, "which is another reason not to dally. Mack, take the wheel."

* * *

How long would he be able to hold out?

Long enough, he hoped.

Sergeant Charles Grey was under no illusion that he could go on forever. If this had been a couple of decades ago then yes, Grey could have kept silent until sheer physical abuse made him silent forever.

But this was the Twenty-First Century, and there were methods that could break any man—not all of them physical and most of them illegal. There were drugs that would spin his thoughts until he was convinced that knock-knock jokes were funny and that the war in Iraq had ended with toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein.

The thing in his favor was that these clowns were unlikely to have anything like that at their fingertips. Drugs like those were kept in major cities—Istanbul, for example—and would take a few hours to arrive. Grey had little doubt that those drugs had already been called for and were on their way to his location. Even if they decided to haul his ass back to Istanbul for the top nut-cracker to work on, they'd try to soften him up with a cocktail or two for the trip.

On the other hand, going to Istanbul might not happen. Whoever was running this show might not be all that well connected with the Turkish people, might want to transfer a spy to someone outside of the country—say, southern Ossetia where Charlie had recently played photographer to a meeting that he hadn't been invited to. So many secrets, so many paths for this slice of life to take, and they all seemed to lead to exposure of one kind or another, not to mention the potential for a lot of screaming in agony as the exposing took place.

That wasn't going to be a problem. He'd seen his buddy Hector outside, helpless to pull Charlie's fat out of the fire. No matter what, Charlie was not going to be meeting with the top level bullies in Istanbul or any other foreign city in this part of the world. There would be a bullet with Charlie's name on it, a favor from one of his brothers to put him out of his misery, before anyone loaded Sgt. Charles Grey onto a chopper for transport to an unknown location.

Charlie had already had his share of luck: they'd dropped him in this cell and left him alone. No doubt waiting for the interrogation expert that he'd met so briefly before—how long ago was it? Charlie didn't know and, frankly, didn't care. If Charlie was really lucky, the man would have gotten tired of waiting for the locals to recapture their prisoner and had returned to his office in a snit. Wouldn't that be the icing on the cake? Every moment alone meant another moment that the enemy wasn't in possession of the intel that Charlie carried.

The computer card: that was the problem. Even death wouldn't remove that concern. He still had it; Charlie could feel it. No one had yet found it on him.

His lips automatically tried for a grim smile, hurting. They still might not find it. They'd ripped the remainder of his clothes off, right down to his skivvies, the bruises standing out dark and forbidding on his chest, on his back. Hell, it even hurt to take a leak, which meant that someone had landed a couple of good ones on his kidneys.

Who said that Charles Grey didn't learn from the enemy? There was that dude a few months back, guy assigned by some terrorist faction to carry a computer chip through enemy lines and onto a plane. Idiot volunteered for it, thought he'd get paid a bundle for his trouble and not get killed in the process. The terrorists had sliced the guy open and put the chip underneath the dude's skin. Charlie had heard the story from Hector, how the dude made Gerhardt take it out fast so he could disappear under the radar with the reward money that Blane got for him.

Stupid dude, but smart terrorists. Hurt like hell, but Charlie had done the same thing, only Charlie was smart enough not to shove the damn card into his shoulder. Too much chance of questions, if someone should rip his shirt off and see a fresh scar. It was the reason that hiding out with sweet Genevieve from the singles' cruise hadn't happened.

Like now. The cold of the cement floor was seeping into his skin with nothing but his skivvies to protect tender flesh. If Charlie had put the card under the skin on his chest, it would have been discovered by now. Those skivvies were covering over the almost-healed incision line that Charlie had made when he slipped the small memory card under the skin. Those skivvies, so far, had protected the card that Charlie had risked his life to carry.

Looked like his luck was about to run out. Feet tromped loudly outside his cell. Even through eyelids closed by swelling, Charlie could sense the shadows falling across the cell, sensed the presence of several men standing over him.

"Mr. DiGriz," said a voice that he had heard only once, just once before escaping from this cell, and truly regretted hearing again. The voice used the name that was his cover identity, a name that would mean nothing to anyone but his handlers back home in the good o' U.S. of A. "Mr. DiGriz, we have unfinished business, you and I."

Crap.


	9. Go Go Go

Four figures, almost invisible in black wetsuits against the dark of the night, emerged from the warm waters of the Aegean. Three quick steps across the sand brought them to the tentative safety of the large boulders flung there by geological upheavals of long ago. Waterproofed packs were opened, and equipment removed from the interiors: guns. Knives, for silent killing. Night-goggles. Flippers and diving masks were stuffed underneath the smaller rocks, to be washed out to sea with the tide. Comm. links were inserted into ears.

Operation: Pirate Booty had begun.

Hand signals sufficed. The four shadows ghosted across the dimly lit square, keeping to the darkened areas surrounding the area until they arrived at their target building: the town hall.

The building was dimly lit, with only a single light that failed to keep the duty officer awake at his desk. There was no one else around; all others were either out patrolling the streets or home in comfortable beds next to willing bed partners, satisfied with their day's work. There would be bonuses for many; the prisoner had been recaptured. The visiting dignitary had been pleased, and had promised more bonuses for the locals to ignore what was happening, just as they ignored the pirates that occasionally docked and drank up all their ill-gotten gains at the bars in town. The details of the world were unimportant to the inhabitants of Komkoy. Earning money to send their sons to University in Istanbul so that those sons could support them in their old age was far more pertinent, and so people like Andre Zelinko were not only tolerated but invited back for tea and crumpets.

The door to the town hall opened. The hinge creaked, but failed to wake the duty officer. Four men in black slipped in, the tall one grabbing the duty officer by the neck. A wickedly sharp knife threatened to give the duty officer the closest shave he had ever had. "Where?" the man hissed, his tones low and threatening.

The duty officer was no fool. Sleep vanished from his thoughts instantly. There could only be one place that the man was referring to. "Basement," he gurgled.

"Good," the tall man hissed. Reversing the knife, he tapped the man on the back of the neck with just the right amount of force. The man collapsed instantly, a reward for cooperation. It could have been a long and quick slice across the windpipe.

He was the lucky one.

Hand signals again, and they split up. One headed back outside, keeping to the shadows. There were vehicles in the lot outside the town hall, most broken down heaps but one or two that appeared to be running. Another, his eyes gleaming in the light, disappeared toward the room where the generator was kept. There was no muttering under his breath, but there wanted to be: another member of the team, not currently available, was the one usually assigned to dousing the lights. Tonight's light-dousing techniques would be a little more permanent than usual. Instead of gently tugging away a few pertinent wires, wholesale destruction of circuit breakers and other associated inventory would be used. _What the hell_, Gerhardt thought. _Some of that bonus money can be used to buy a new generator or two._

The final two had their own destination. Guns in hand, they leap-frogged to the stairwell, heading down two flights, peering through dingy windows, making certain that the intervening floors were as empty or more so than the main one.

Not so the basement. There was a great deal of light there, piling into the dank concrete-sided corridor, illuminating more than was needed. Bars lined the walls, heavy and thick, keeping prisoners in with sheer fortitude. Three of the cells were empty; the inhabitants of Komkoy had learned long ago not to annoy those with the power to put them here.

Not the fourth cell. It was occupied, and it was the source of the bright beams. Shadows quivered against the corridor wall, telling the invaders that more than one man was in that cell. A scream echoed through the corridor, a scream hauled out of a body going through something that no man should ever have to face. Lips tightened; eyes narrowed.

Squirt through the comm. link. _Ready?_

Double squirt. _Go. Go. Go_.

The cell plunged into blackness. Two night goggles were shoved onto two pairs of eyes.

Blane and Brown burst into the corridor, were at the fourth cell in a micro-second, guns blazing. Hot bodies gleamed redly through night goggle vision.

Hostage identified: no shoot zone.

_Three hostiles on the right_. Blane left them on the floor, blood pooling around them. Hot red immediately began to cool toward orange.

_Two on the left_. Brown took one through the eye—dead instantly. The other had time for one bubbling breath before his heart stopped beating.

Enemy target sighted: Andre Zelinko. Time to take their own hostage. Blane knocked the knife out of Zelinko's hand—blood on it. Grey's blood—and grabbed the smaller man by the throat.

No time for pleasantries. Blane applied pressure to the carotids, cutting off the blood supply to the brain until he was certain that Zelinko was out cold. He turned to Brown. "Charlie?" he breathed.

"Alive."

Blane let out the breath he hadn't realized that he'd been holding. _Alive_. Nothing more important than that.

Not so. Charlie himself had sent the message, that he had important data to pass along.

Priorities: Blane got into Grey's face, never mind that it was dark. Through those eyes, no one could see anything. "Sergeant Grey."

Charlie tried to open his blood-shot eyes anyway. "Top." The word was almost unintelligible.

"Report." Short, declarative sentences. That was the best way to get into an abused and befuddled brain.

Charlie tried to cooperate. "Computer…card."

"Did they get it, soldier?"

"No, sir." Even through his pain, Grey was indignant. That came through loud and clear.

"Good man. Where is it, sergeant?"

Grey cracked a smile, 'crack' being the operative word. More drops of blood appeared on his lips as the bruised flesh protested their condition, bristling hotly to night vision. "Under the skin, Top."

"Damn." Blane knew exactly what his man had done. Blane had been there, had listened as Mack Gerhardt had described the mule's transport of the computer chip in his body to the rest of the 303rd Logistical. They all knew that if it had been tried once, the terrorists would try the same stunt again.

Blane hadn't expected that his own man would try it. "Where'd you put it, sergeant?" It was going to be impossible to find against all of the rainbow-colored bruises and certainly not in the dark, never mind the goggles.

Another grin, and Charlie's head lolled against Brown strong supporting arm. "Close to where the sun don't shine, boss." He caught Blane's eyes with his own, plucked weak fingers against the black latex. "Get it out, Top."

"We're getting _you_ out," Blane told him in no uncertain terms.

"Top…" A one inch memory card would be far easier to smuggle out of the country than a chewed up and spit out army special ops sergeant. They all knew it. Blane didn't care.

"Sergeant Brown." Blane gave the order.

Brown nodded. He tugged Charlie's arm over his shoulder, hoisting the man to his feet and forcing out yet another moan. "C'mon, Charlie," he urged, ignoring the flinch that the man's pain sent through him. "Stay with me, bro. It's not over yet."

"Wonderful," Charlie whispered, closing his eyes, trying to set one foot ahead of the other.

Blane turned to his prisoner, flipping the man over and providing him with a set of plastic cuffs to keep his hands behind his back. Then he set Zelinko onto his feet, the man swaying as he regained his wits. Moonlight slipped in through the barred window high upon the wall and lit the man's face with satanic shadows. "Mr. Zelinko."

Dark eyes focused, and filled with hatred. "You. I was right about you."

"Yes, you were," Blane agreed, "but you have something a little more important to decide right now. _I_ have something more important to decide: whether or not to kill you right here and now. Make no mistake, sir: I _will_ kill you if you fail to cooperate completely. Do I make myself understood?"

"You do."

Blane clearly heard the sub-text: if Zelinko got the chance to turn the tables, he would do so. Blane resolved not to give him the chance. "Good. Walk. Go up the stairs; follow my people. Do not speak, no matter what. The next word that you utter will be your last. Go." Blane pushed Zelinko forward, a gun next to his captive's spine.

Gerhardt met them at the top of the stairs, reaching out to help pull Grey up the last few steps. The tortured man was almost out on his feet, eyes rolling back in his head, but not yet finished. The duty officer was still face down on his desk, unconscious. Gerhardt slipped a helping hand under Charlie's arm, guiding him to the nearest chair and easing him down off of his feet. "Bro, you are a right mess. Snake Doc, Hammerhead is outside, waiting for us."

"Good. Give Cool Breeze a hand."

"Right." Gerhardt pulled out the bundle that he'd brought him, taking out an expensive coat and matching pants.

Zelinko's eyes narrowed as he recognized his own clothing.

"Somebody's got good taste," Brown couldn't help remarking snidely, sliding the pants onto Grey, helping to belt them in. Grey was more slender through the waist than Zelinko, having spent more time working out. "Slide your arms through these," he instructed, helping Gerhardt to finish getting the coat onto their compatriot. "You look almost human again," he told Charlie. "Almost out of here."

"Good." The word was hard to understand but not the intent.

"Let's get out of here." Blane was getting nervous. There were people in the square, likely people who belonged to Zelinko. "Finish it up."

"One more thing." Gerhardt plucked the hat off of Zelinko's head, the elegant fedora remarkably having stayed on throughout the trek up from the basement. "I think my friend can use this more than you."

"You—" Zelinko broke it off at Blane's cautionary finger.

More clothing came out of Gerhardt's bundle, dark pants and shirts to cover over the black latex wetsuits. It only took a moment before all three could pass in the dark for ordinary citizens.

"Let's go," Blane urged. "Remember, Zelinko: not a word."

Zelinko let his eyes do the talking for him: _I will kill you_.

Charlie couldn't help the groan as Brown and Gerhardt hoisted him back onto shaky feet, both men not daring to release him.

"C'mon, Carlito," Mack urged. "You can do it. Just a few more feet. Just a few steps."

Charlie gave him a game smile. "Right."

Williams had a hot-wired car just outside the steps to the town hall, engine still running, waiting for them to emerge. Brown could see the fierce anger in the soldier's eyes as he took in the sight of the man they'd rescued, but not a move did he make to go to him. There were some half a dozen men in the square, patrolling the streets with guns in hands, and any one of them could raise the alarm and bring down a small army to ruin their escape. Williams stood by the car, door held open.

At the top of the steps, Gerhardt felt some misgivings. Those enemy agents patrolling the square were all watching this little scene, everyone keeping an eye on 'the boss'. "They're watching you, bro," he whispered into Charlie's ear. "Make it look good."

Charlie did. Gerhardt had no idea where the man pulled it out from, but Sgt. Grey stood himself up tall and strode down the steps as if he were Zelinko and the man in Blane's grasp with his hands cuffed behind him was the luckless spy.

He almost made it. The last step, crawling into the waiting sedan, proved too much for Grey. He stumbled and collapsed, going to one knee.

Fortunately Brown had preceded him into the sedan. Brown reached out and hauled on sore arms, making it look as though 'Zelinko' was stepping onto the floor of the sedan. Williams eased himself over so as to further block the view of the interested onlookers.

"Get in." Blane shoved the real Zelinko in the small of his back, pushing their captive onto the seat beside his victim. "Hammerhead, get us out of here."

* * *

The sedan rolled over the streets of Komkoy, only the moon lighting their way. Williams kept it to a slow crawl, as would any driver in the late evening. The roads twisted through the bazaar, making speed impossible. The only sound inside the vehicle was the harsh breathing of the tortured man sitting next to Bob Brown, air whistling through swollen lips.

Zelinko dared to utter the first words in minutes. "Where are you taking me? The dock? Your yacht is not there. You took it out this afternoon and did not return."

"Yes, we did, didn't we?" Blane chose not to punish his captive's speech. At the moment, it made no difference. There was no one to hear him.

Emboldened, Zelinko pushed ahead. "I can offer you riches. You can live as princes on your own islands. You can take as many wives as you wish."

"One is enough for me," Blane told him. "One is more than enough. Besides, I don't think much of your benefits package."

Zelinko stared at him. A suspicion re-surfaced. "My cargo…"

"You mean the one sitting on the sea floor?" Gerhardt asked from the front seat beside Williams. "It's gettin' a little rusty for my tastes."

"I notice he didn't say anything about his people who went down with the cargo," Williams observed, taking the curve in the road. "I wonder if they had a 401(K)? Maybe a life insurance policy or two to put the kids through college?"

"Health care's a bit on the shoddy side," Brown told him, glaring at Zelinko across Grey's battered face.

"Like I said," Blane repeated blandly, "terrible benefits."

Williams slowed the car by the pier, bringing it to a stop. "Close as we're going to get, Snake Doctor."

"Good man." Blane turned to Gerhardt. "You go on ahead, Dirt Diver. Get the boat ready to set sail. Hammerhead, Cool Breeze, the two of you help get our drunken fellow here back to his comfy little bunk on board. I'll follow with our friend here."

"You gonna be all right with him, all by yourself, Snake Doc?" Gerhardt wanted to know.

"I think we'll do just fine," Blane reassured him. "After all, Mr. Zelinko is very much aware that bullet number one has his name on it. Isn't that right, Mr. Zelinko?"

Clenched teeth. "Yes."

Blane chuckled. "As the man says, children: make it work."

Three sedan doors opened. Gerhardt didn't wait, but headed off into the darkness along the dock, the far away street light barely outshining the half moon over head. Despite never having been there before, he knew exactly where he was going: the _Rich and Fancy_, the name painted onto the speedboat in gold and black against the sea blue hull. It was built for speed, with a half cabin encircling the wheel and topping the entrance into the engine room. It didn't take much to hot-wire the finely tuned engine into a smooth and quiet purr.

Brown pulled Grey from the vehicle, steadying him until Williams could come around to shore up the other side.

"C'mon, bro," Williams urged. "Almost home."

"Sure, we are." Grey staggered, needing both men to keep him upright. Blane was right: the trio looked like two good friends escorting a drunkard home. The only thing missing was Grey caroling at the top of drunken lungs. Neither Brown nor Williams trusted the injured man to get himself safely on board the speed boat; as one, they lifted him up and over, depositing him onto the deck floor. None of them believed that Grey could remain upright, even in one of the chairs that the _Rich and Fancy_ boasted.

"Your turn. Out." Blane gestured with his gun.

Zelinko looked for support, but it wasn't there. The pier was almost empty, and certainly no one was around that could haul Zelinko out of his predicament. He stepped on board his own speed boat, glowering, waiting for his opportunity to strike. Blane resolved not to allow that to occur.

Gerhardt backed the boat out of the dock and headed toward the open sea.

Just in time—light poured into the square where the town hall was, some three miles away. All five of them could see the illumination blazing away in the distance as the second escape of the prisoner was discovered along with several bodies.

"Now we'll see just how fast this little rowboat really is," Gerhardt remarked to no one in particular.

"They got under way faster than we expected," Williams worried, holding field glasses to his face. "Snake Doc, they're already on the water. They're using the police boats, at their own dock close to the town hall."

"Like I said: how fast is this thing?"

The race was on. Zelinko had invested in the fastest water vehicle that money could buy—but so had the local authorities who had had to put up with pirates. Speed was necessary for both the ability to arrest the malfeasants or escape should the pirates turn out to have superior firepower. Only the fastest boats remained intact, as did only the fastest pilots. Blane hung on to the rail, watching the pursuers creep up closer, knowing that Williams was securing Grey and his all-important memory chip inside the half-cabin.

Would it be fast enough?

The gleam in Zelinko's eye told Blane that it wasn't the local authorities manning the pursuing speed boat, but Zelinko's people themselves, armed with weaponry that Zelinko had supplied instead of cheap government issue. If that weren't enough, Brown let him know that there was another boat on the horizon. Not as fast, but coming in to cut them off from the wider Mediterranean. Reinforcements were coming, and they didn't belong to Blane and his men.

"Top?" Even without seeing what was going on, Grey knew how tight it was.

"Cool Breeze?"

"Can't tell, Snake Doc." Brown appeared from down below. "Comm's open, but I didn't get a response."

"Keep trying, Cool Breeze. I estimate not more than ten minutes before they're upon us."

"On it." Brown vanished again.

Time for more preparations. "Hammerhead, break out the gear."

"Yes, sir." Williams left Grey to fend for himself for the moment, pulling out an M16 from the bundles that they'd dragged along on this mission, handing it over to Blane. Another M16 disappeared down below to stand at Brown's side, and a third stayed pinned to the deck by Gerhardt's foot against the moment when he found the time to pick it up instead of manning the wheel, heading the speedboat south toward the Mediterranean Sea.

One more thing: Blane knelt by Grey, his wounded soldier trying to stay conscious, propped up against the side of the half-cabin. He reversed his hand gun and offered the handle to Grey. "Think you can handle this?"

"Top?" Confusion in brown eyes.

Blane clarified the order. "Think you can shoot Zelinko over there if he needs shooting?"

Anger and loathing washed over Grey's face. "_That_ I can handle," he drawled. Those words came out loud and clear and more distinct than anything else. He aimed down the barrel. Zelinko was less than six feet away. Zelinko paled.

"Good man." Blane stepped over to Gerhardt's position to get a better handle on their status.

"They're getting' closer, Snake Doc," Gerhardt warned. "Before too long, they're going to start putting some lead into our hull. Won't matter if they don't hit us personally. We'll take on water, and that'll slow us down. We'll be sitting ducks."

Blane kept his voice down. "I'm open to ideas, sergeant."

"Wish I had some to offer, Snake Doc."

"Just keep the throttle open, Dirt Diver."

"Throttle open, Snake Doc."

Gerhardt was right. They would be within target range inside of three minutes. It wouldn't even have to be a fight to the death; take on enough water and they'd sink and drown, playing tag with Hammerhead's namesake. The other boat could afford to sink, with their friends coming five minutes behind to pick up the survivors. Blane and his men wouldn't be survivors. They'd be dead.

_Crack!_ Timing was a bit off, Blane decided. It had only been two minutes, and the first bullet had reached the hull. That meant that the rifles that Zelinko's people were playing with had a slightly better range than their own.

"The news just gets better and better," he remarked to the open air. "Cool Breeze, you'd better get up on deck," he called. "We're going to need you."

The fight was on. Blane and Williams crouched behind the bulwarks, sending sprays of bullets careening across the waves to smash into deserving bodies as well as the oncoming boat. Brown dodged up and down, a spray here, a spray there, then back to the engine room to try to call for help. Bullets smacked into their own hull, one or two passing all the way through before dropping spent to the deck but most chipping away at the paint and fiberglass. The pirates got the idea fairly quickly to drop their slugs into the hull below the water line. Blane could hear water sloshing below, seeping in through small round holes, the engine coughing and sputtering as water crept into its parts. The gap between the two boats closed.

"Snake Doc!" Gerhardt yelled.

Blane twisted and fired. A pirate jerked back, hit, dead body flopping from the oncoming speed boat. One pirate leaped onto the _Rich and Fancy_, screeching. Williams charged him, jamming his rifle butt into the man's gut and folding him over before the pirate's own people shot him in the back in an excess of frenzy. Gerhardt abandoned the wheel to snatch up his M16, spraying a shower of lead across the bow of the oncoming vessel. No more running. This was hand to hand combat. This was life or death, here and now.

Brown vaulted up from the engine room; there was nothing he could do down there. The engine and comm. link were both dead, drowned in the sea water rushing in. A shot here, another one there, and Brown drew his knife for close infighting.

They were outnumbered three to one. Gerhardt all but ripped one man's head off; Williams pushed another off into the water with one long and elegant kick, the enemy shrieking in frustration. Blane wanted to tell his men to fall back, but there was nowhere to fall back to. This was it. End of the line. Nowhere to go.

The sea boiled beneath them, bubbles churning upward. The _Rich and Fancy_ flung herself back and forth in the waves, nearly capsizing and toppling them into the water. _What the hell—?_

Screams emerged from the other vessel, it too riding high on a sudden and unexpected tidal wave of air rushing upward. Was there some sort of Moby Dick emerging from the depths, some giant squid come to grab a quick lunch? Another wave, and Blane was flying through the air.

Water struck him hard, and he sank several feet before he could orient himself and swim upward for air. Blane's head broke the surface, and he desperately inhaled precious air before he could understand what had happened.

More waves, and Blane held his breath as they crashed over his head. A huge dark object surfaced, an object dwarfing Blane several hundred times over.

It was a huge dark metallic object, and it had a number of windows along its side and a periscope on top of its tower and it was the most beautiful thing Jonas Blane had seen in his lifetime.

"This is the USS Determination," the bullhorn blared out. "Stand by to be rescued!"

Apparently some of the pirates didn't want to be rescued by the immense sub that had capsized their speedboat. The survivors swam in the opposite direction, heading for the second slower boat that was now turning in a giant circle to flee. Blane looked around for his men; one, in particular.

He didn't know who had hold of who, and it didn't matter. Charlie Grey was getting the worst of the deal. Zelinko was shoving the man down under the water, trying to drown him, trying to get away from the sergeant. Zelinko still didn't know exactly what Grey had but he knew that it was important and he knew that he, Zelinko, was finished—unless he could destroy whatever evidence Grey had. Zelinko was hampered by the cuffs pinning his hands behind him, but Grey was still getting the worst of it. Zelinko hadn't gotten to where he was by letting other people fight his battles for him.

Gerhardt: too far away. Brown and Williams: likewise.

Long and powerful legs kicked Blane forward through the waves, long arms reaching and grabbing water to propel him closer. Both men coughing and choking, first one head below the waves, and then the other. Zelinko's head went down and bobbed back up. Then Grey's head was down. Staying down. _Shit…_

Rip the gun runner away from his sergeant. Pull him off. Palm strike to the nose, a deadly blow, push it off center at the last minute—his superiors would have a use for this piece of scum. Best keep him alive. Rattle the man's brains. Shove him into Gerhardt's grasp and dive down to grab hold of Grey's shirt before the man could sink any further.

Pull him to the surface. Blow air into his lungs, still bobbing in the wake of the emergent sub.

Hands grabbing them both, pulling them out of the water. Fight to hang onto his man, let go when he realized that it was friendlies who had them both.

"Get the oxygen!" someone bawled. "Get a mask! He's not breathing!"


	10. Stinkin' Hero

One of the best things about being rescued by a vessel with a complement of over a thousand was that there was a decent chance of getting some clothes that fit. Jonas Blane was not the tallest or the largest man on board.

He was not, however, about to leave his man alone, even with friendlies. He'd sent the other three off for a hot shower and dry clothes, intending for one or more of them to replace him at Grey's side until they could secure that damn memory card. Blane had commandeered a blanket to throw over his own shoulders and had substantially stopped dripping fresh Aegean seawater onto the floor of sick bay, watching as the medics worked on the limp body of Charlie Grey.

Maybe not so limp.

"Hey, watch it! Let the damn anesthetic take effect!" The words were mumbled through swollen lips but no less heartfelt.

"Get the mask over him, seaman." Grey's words became muffled, and Blane wasn't about to swear that he didn't hear a 'that'll shut him up' from the chief medical officer doing the minor surgery. Metal clinked against metal, and the doc pulled something small and bloody from some place inside Grey that it hadn't belonged. Another clink, and the memory card ended up in a small metal dish, another seaman doubling as a surgical nurse wiping it down with gloves and a couple pieces of gauze.

The doc looked over his mask at Blane. "That what you're waiting for, sergeant?"

"It is, sir. I'll take care of that." Blane reached for the dish with item that Grey had risked his life to smuggle out.

The seaman hesitated. "Sir, the captain seemed to think that he—"

"This is not the captain's mission, seaman." Blane kept coming.

"Sir, you have to stay out of the sterile area—"

"Sergeant, this is my operatory, and you _will_ stand back—"

"Doc, his pressure's dropping!"

"Shit," the doctor swore, turning back instantly. "Open up the IV. Give me some numbers, Joe."

"Ninety over fifty, doc. Eighty four over forty. Crap, I'm only getting sixty palp, doc."

"Sinus brady."

"Starting a second line, large bore."

"Give him an amp of epi, Joe. He's decompensating. Increase his O2 to one hundred percent. Hang some saline in that second line."

Blane grabbed the dish from the seaman who, relieved of his first burden, ran to fetch whatever items the doctor was demanding.

"Tach'ing away at one twenty, doc. Pressure's up to seventy over thirty."

"Doc?" _Talk to me, doc. Tell me my man is going to be all right_.

The doctor heard the unspoken words, focused on that instead of the disputed memory chip. "We're getting him back." He raised his voice. "He's bleeding somewhere inside, and I don't have the equipment on this boat to tell where it's coming from." He came to a decision. "I'm calling for air transport, sergeant. Germany has the closest base to here with the right equipment."

Gerhardt came in on the end of that dire pronouncement, toweling his hair, followed by Brown and Williams, neither of whom needed to towel what little hair they had. Gerhardt frowned. "Top?"

Blane pressed the dish with the precious memory card into Gerhardt's hands. "Don't let that out of your sight. I'm going to go see if I can't hurry things up a bit for the good doctor."

* * *

"Hey."

Grey got the distinct feeling that there was someone leaning over him. Contrary to the last time someone leaned over him, this time there was no smell of unwashed body odor. There was some antiseptic in the background, something smelling like ammonia beyond that, but all in all pretty clean. Big plastic smell all around.

He was lying on something fairly comfortable, too. Warm—how long had it been since he'd felt warm? Seemed like forever.

Felt like someone had scooped out his insides and replaced them with—nothing. Great big empty space where his guts ought to be. Lots of little pinpricks of pain, couple in his arm, bigger one in his leg. Face felt twice as large as usual.

Eyes not working too well. Too bright in here; hurt to open his eyes. Felt good just to lie here and not move. Grey recognized the _don't care_ sensation of morphine. _Whole world of hurt around here, morphine takes it away and locks it up somewhere safe for a little while. Great stuff._

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty."

He knew that voice. "Hector?" Words came out mumbled. Lips hurt when he tried to move 'em.

Chuckle. "Welcome back, bro. I thought you were going to sleep the whole way home."

"Home?" There was something distinctly wrong with that statement. Last thing Charlie remembered was getting cut open on the sub that hauled his ass out of the Aegean…

_Crap_. That explained the ouch so high up on his leg that threatened to make him swear off sex. That damn memory card.

Williams seemed to understand his confusion. "Top pulled some strings, got you transferred to Germany real quick so that they could sew you back together again."

"Not…in Germany…" There was a hum all around him, something that didn't fit with being in a hospital.

Once again, Williams figured out what his thoughts were. "Top took one look at the intel you hauled out of Georgia, and that was that. He got on the horn with the colonel, who contacted the geniuses over in the State Department. Next thing we know, we're getting an all expenses paid trip back home with a fighter pilot escort. Bro, they want to talk to _you_."

"Me?"

"Yes, you, bro. Somebody's already talking about a few policy changes in the region based on your intel. You're a stinkin' hero, bro." Williams took a look at some of the machinery that Grey was hooked up to, seemed to like what he saw. "Go back to sleep, bro. I'll tell you about this again when you wake up. We'll be in D.C. next time."

"Next time?" Yet another theme that he wasn't comprehending.

"Yeah, Charlie." Another soft chuckle. "This is the third time I've explained this to you, bro; we've been in the air for six hours. Maybe next time when you wake up, you'll remember."

* * *

The talking head on the TV moved on to foreign affairs. "In an unrelated story today, the American ambassadors to both Greece and Turkey offered an apology for a United States submarine that entered the Aegean Sea without authorization. No one was injured in the incident, and no shots were fired," the talking head reported. "The State Department tells us that a simple navigation error was responsible for the incident. When we come back, we'll hear from our Senior Correspondent in Washington about pork barrel spending."

Every man there had broken off to concentrate on the news blurb and then, as one, they deliberately resumed their conversation. Not one mentioned the thought that ran through each mind: no one was going to admit that a dozen or so pirates were now resting on the sea bed floor, and one Andre Zelinko was currently being 'de-briefed' in an unknown location.

They were in the Blane household, gathering over a good meal and to check on their buddy. Molly Blane, hearing about how Charlie Grey had fallen while attempting to pull down a crate of forms off a tall shelf, had insisted that her husband's fellow soldier move in for a few days to recuperate. It had been a bad accident, Jonas had told her, with another shelf falling on top of the man.

It wasn't just Molly who insisted on helping, but the rest of the wives as well, bringing over soup and ferrying the man to rehab services. Annie too had dropped in for the last two days running, once with and once without Hector.

"Hey, I'm fine as long as I don't move," Charlie protested, his mouth full of lasagna. "Molly, you didn't have to do this. I got a place."

"Nonsense," Molly smiled back at him. "What was I supposed to do, let you fade away to nothing with only Hector to look after you? The man goes to the office every day."

"Besides, she cooks better than I do." Hector's mouth too was filled.

Molly ladled more salad onto Hector's plate, offering the dish to Tiffy as well. "Couldn't prove it by this meal. Annie brought the lasagna."

"Thanks, Annie." Charlie followed her every move, relieved when she didn't seem to notice. Annie sat down beside Hector on the sofa, grinning as she plopped another slice of garlic bread onto his place. _They seem happy together_. _That could have been _me_ and Annie, if Hector's beeper had gone off that day instead of mine…_

"To the good cooks that we come home to." Jonas Blane lifted his glass in an impromptu toast. "May they forever prepare our meals."

"Here, here," Bob Brown echoed, his arm around his wife Kim's waist, bestowing a kiss on the top of her brown hair.

"Where, where?" she echoed, smiling up at him, listening to the groans come out from everyone around. "Annie, that's a lovely pin you have. New?"

Annie dimpled. "Hector gave it to me," she confessed.

"Somebody outside the base was selling them," Hector said carefully. "Roadside stand sort of thing."

"It's beautiful," Tiffy told her. "Don't ever get married, 'cause he'll stop bringing you gifts."

"Hey! I was gonna," Gerhardt protested, thinking of the scarf he'd picked up as cover in the tourist shop, the one that had somehow disappeared when they returned the _Athena_ to its owner. He and Brown had made a side trip while Grey was undergoing surgery in Germany, arranging for a chopper to drop them back onto the yacht in the Aegean and then sailing it back to its harbor. He'd meant to get something for Tiffy and his daughters in Athens, but the time slipped away and they really weren't supposed to do stuff like that…

They both had the same taste, Charlie realized, he and Hector. The pin looked very similar to the one that he'd stuck in his travel pack that had been left behind on the train from Rize to Istanbul, the pin that Charlie had intended to give to Hector to give to Annie. Not ostentatious but with its own sense of attractiveness, something that struck you, turned away, then made you turn back to look at it again. Just like Annie.

Looking at them sitting next to each other, looking into each other's eyes with newfound love, Charlie suddenly felt very tired. He leaned back in the overstuffed chair where Blane and Brown had placed him, wishing that he had the strength to get up and take his pain somewhere where he didn't have to look at them, wishing not for the first time that he could find someone as great as Annie for himself. Hector was his brother. Hector had just saved his life. Charlie was happy that the two of them had found each other. Charlie told himself that he was glad that he'd introduced the two of them to each other. Hector deserved the best. Annie _was_ the best.

Molly caught the movement. "Jonas," she said quietly.

Blane immediately came to his feet. "Getting late," he told the crowd obediently. "Time for all good little heroes to be in bed."

Kim looked at her watch. "Goodness, is it nine o'clock already? The babysitter will be wondering what happened to us."

Annie came over and deposited a kiss on top of Charlie's head. "You take it easy," she whispered, her voice sending a thrill through too many parts of him. "I'll stop by and check on you tomorrow."

Charlie forced a smile for both of them, for Annie and for Hector. "Sure thing. See you tomorrow."

Jonas and Molly closed the door on their guests, Molly moving off to stow the food in the kitchen.

Jonas hooked an arm under Charlie's, helping him to his feet. "Come on, hero," he repeated. "Been a long day."

Yeah. A long day. A mission filled with secrets.

The End.


End file.
